Pernice Brothers – Who Will You Believe (2024) [FLAC 24bit/48kHz]

Pernice Brothers – Who Will You Believe (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 40:25 minutes | 511 MB | Genre: Indie Rock, Americana
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © New West Records, LLC

Joe Pernice has been writing for a long time – most of his life, in fact – and has crafted a remarkable catalog that boldly reinterprets and recasts classic American pop. Who Will You Believe may be his most moving and nuanced album yet; it’s certainly his timeliest. “These songs were all written during the same time period,” he says, “and they all seemed to tap into a mood I was in at the time. I go through spells where I’m a certain way for three or four months. I might be more reticent than usual, or more outgoing. With all of my records—and especially with this one—the songs all feel like they belong together, probably because they all arrived during the same stretch of time.”

In a single six-month stretch he was left reeling from the deaths of three close friends, including David Berman, poet and songwriter for Silver Jews and Purple Mountains, and Gary Stewart, the Rhino Records co-founder and tireless Pernice Brothers supporter since their first album in 1998. “That was such a bad patch when David and Gary both took their own lives. And my cousin Joe Harvard, who started Fort Apache Studios in Boston and was like a brother to me – he died, too. It was such a tough year. I was thinking about them a lot and watching how divided America had become. I was doing my best to try and take nothing for granted.”

Pernice has been releasing albums for over 25 years. And with age comes a greater patience and an immense appreciation for the act of creation. Who Will You Believe showcases a beautiful balance between such sadness and moments of solemnity with warm humor and camaraderie.After a long break from his musical career, which began in the early 1990s with the Western Massachusetts-based Scud Mountain Boys, Joe Pernice reunites with many of his past collaborators including his brother Bob and Peyton Pinkerton on guitars. Always a solid songsmith initially working in an Uncle Tupelo/Wilco bag, Pernice later branched out to catchy rootsy pop music in albums released under his own name.

“December in her Eyes” reveals what Pernice treasures most in his music collection, as well as how he’s still capable of elevating his game. There are classic 1960s Bacharach-influenced violins and trumpet swaying as he pleads for a friend’s intervention in a relationship drifting towards the rocks.

Engineered and mixed by Pernice, Mike McKenzie and Liam Jaeger in Toronto, Ontario, with additional work by Jeff Galegher at Carnassial Sound, the sound is what you’d expect from an old pro like Pernice: alive, unprocessed, intimate in all the right places. He switches gears into buzzy indie rock guitar heroics in “Hey, Guitars,” bowing to the power of his chosen instrument: “Hey, guitar/ Let me see your scar/ Tune me up and turn me on/ Amen.” A whiff of politics imbues “A Man of Means,” a cheeky, creaky Beatle-esque rocker with an ob-la-di, ob-la-da chorus (“Do-it-did-it-done-it-do-it-did-it-done-it”).

Frequent vocal partner Neko Case emotes in her usual strong fashion on “I Don’t Need That Anymore,” a duet that details another relationship that’s run its course: “It’s a fool who’ll tell you love is simple, and less is almost always more.” Horns join the massed vocals of the Toronto-based choral group Choir! Choir! Choir! in “The Purple Rain,” Pernice’s grand ode to a number of recent tragedies in his personal life. The combined effect gives extra weight to the chorus of “Remember me to her sea-bound train/ Remember me to her fruited plains/ Purple mountains in purple rain won’t always separate the shining seas/ The wake is washing over me.” A long overdue musical return by an always compelling creative. – Robert Baird

Tracklist:

1-1. Pernice Brothers – Who Will You Believe (02:35)
1-2. Pernice Brothers – Look Alive (03:11)
1-3. Pernice Brothers – Not This Pig (02:38)
1-4. Pernice Brothers – What We Had (03:59)
1-5. Pernice Brothers – December in Her Eyes (04:55)
1-6. Pernice Brothers – A Song for Sir Robert Helpmann (02:29)
1-7. Pernice Brothers – Hey, Guitar (03:53)
1-8. Pernice Brothers – A Man of Means (03:05)
1-9. Pernice Brothers – I Don’t Need That Anymore (feat. Neko Case) (03:02)
1-10. Pernice Brothers – Ordinary Goldmine (03:18)
1-11. Pernice Brothers – How Will We Sleep (03:58)
1-12. Pernice Brothers – The Purple Rain (03:16)

Download from FileJoker: