In a wickedly funny essay accompanying the press materials for the new Pernice Brothers album, band mastermind Joe Pernice recounts a hellish airplane ride across the Atlantic. “The plane just dropped about 500 feet in a second, and a red-faced flight attendant, picking herself off the floor, readjusting her skirt, is hoping we didn’t see what we all saw,” he writes.
For better and worse, The World Won’t End has nothing nearly that dramatic or jarring. The second album under the Pernice Brothers name, coming after Pernice’s solo recording Big Tobacco and a moody side-project release as Chappaquiddick Skyline, is flush with melancholy pop from start to finish. Even the song about dying in a plane crash (“Flaming Wreck”) glides along on pillowy harmonies and piano accompaniment.
Once upon a time, Pernice was in the Scud Mountain Boys, who released three laid-back, country-tinged albums in the mid-’90s. But the roots references are long since evaporated, leaving Pernice and cohort Thom Monahan free to indulge their taste for Pet Sounds-cum-Bacharach production.
It works wonderfully when joined to pearly pop songs such as the opening trio of “Working Girls”, “7:30” (which even ends with a “da-da-da” chorus), and “Our Time Has Passed”. But the melodies get hazier further into the record, and the uniformity of the soundscapes starts to blur everything together. Pleasant as it is, I can’t help wishing for one or two moments like the nosedive that ruffled the stewardess’ skirt.
