Now always I wait for you to take this pale opaque and let some light through," sings
Joe Pernice (in an airy voice over a thumping bass line) on "There Goes the Sun," the
opening track from the Pernice Brothers' latest release, Discover a Lovelier
You. Even from that briefest of quotes, you can get a pretty good sense of
what a Pernice Brothers album is all about — the tension between hope and
skepticism. Invoking as it does George Harrison's hopeful "Here Comes the Sun," Pernice's
song turns the table on that optimism: "Kick this life from me till one better
comes. Till one better comes, there goes the sun." There is hope here, but it
is a measured hope, the hope held by one cautious of any expression of unbridled
optimism. Such is Joe Pernice's musical world, and Discover a Lovelier You is
a strong statement of this worldview.
It would be a mistake to call the band's fifth album a "perfect summer record," as,
no doubt, some already have. Even though the music here is pure pop heaven — light,
jaunty, shimmering guitars, dreamy harmonies, plenty of "ooh oohs" and "la las," and
melodies that bore straight into your brain — the lyrics balance this mood
with a darker, deeper feel. Pernice's lyrics represent the skepticism mentioned
above, while the lyrics bring that qualified sense of hope. The conflict between
these two opposing forces give the songs assembled here a weight that, on first
listen, seems nearly weightless. On "Saddest Quo," Pernice sings of trying to
maintain faith in a world that is determined to revel in the negative: "All the
acolytes are choking, but my faith in life's unbroken. Want to leave this room
better than I found it." The chorus, one of the more infectious of the album,
drives the point home: "There's a train wreck picking up survivors from a plane
crash on the TV live. It's a sad status quotient waiting for the sky to fall." Fear
permeates our lives these days, Pernice suggests in "Say Goodnight to the Lady," invoking
as he does life in the era of constant terror alerts: "Felt ghost-white too sick
to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. Was a color-coded era, now I guess it always is." Even
in the gloomiest of moods, however, Pernice struggles to find some intimation
of hope: "In the green East River where no water lilies grow, prayed for hope
to spring eternal even if the trickle's slow."
Pernice's ability to combine the tenuous hope of the music with the skepticism and darkness of his lyrics, delicately balancing the two, is remarkable, and the album succeeds in creating a dreamy mood that is both soothing and slightly unsettling. And yet this mood is relentless, and, ultimately, all the songs begin to sound the same. It's an interesting paradox — the album's strength is, at the same time, its weakness. Of course, this type of conflict seems to be exactly what Pernice is after.
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