It doesn't sit quite so high in my estimation anymore. It's a minor album, a classy, neat, minor album, free of fluff, short on faults, maybe a tiny bit short on truly memorable melodies. Its creator, Joe Pernice (for the Pernice Brothers - though it did contain his brother Bob amongst others - is very much the vision of one Joe Pernice, who has also recorded under his own name, as Chappaquidick Skyline, as lead singer of alt-country middleweights The Scud Mountain Boys, as part of the New Mendicants with Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake) is a master songwriter, one of those cult men hanging around for decades who's never quite famous.
He's made loads of other really strong albums of strong songs, but this one stands out in my estimation by a long mile. Why is that? Is it truly better than his other works such as 'Big Tobacco', 'Overcome by Happiness' and 'Yours, Mine and Ours', or is it just that it's my album, the one I've chosen to love and cherish?
2001 was a pretty good year for music for me, in fact probably my favourite. I was buying and listening to a lot of albums, some of which are seen as classics, yet this is the album that stands out. What else was there? Off the top of my head, I enjoyed Elbow's debut, Ash's Free All Angels, Mercury Rev's All is Dream, Roots Manuva's Run Come Save Me, Bob Dylan's Love and Theft, Ryan Adam's Gold, The Strokes' Is This It, The White Stripes' Red Blood Cells, Matthew Jay's Draw, Ed Harcourt and Tom McRae's debuts, The Furries' Rings Around the World, PJ Harvey's Stories from the Cities, Stories from the Sea, Spiritualized's Let it Come Down, Spearmint's A Different Lifetime, and i'm sure, plenty more. A lot of indie pop, a lot of singer-songwriter, that's where I was at back then.
It's probably 'Is This It' by the Strokes which defines the year. It was set up to be a "classic", mythologised before it even came out. To me, as with the rest of their career, though they are a band whose songs I like, it was a mild disappointmen, The best songs were those on the EPs which we'd all already heard. The album was more of the same, but less. That's not the band or the album's fault, but it's just an aspect of why some albums fulfil, thrill or let down.
The Pernice Brothers' 'The World Won't End' had nothing to live up to with me, I'd never heard of them, I liked a song I heard by them on an Uncut free CD, I think they had another song getting occasional airplay on XFM, I liked the sound of the review I read, I bought it, I liked it.
Not wildly, to start with. I just liked it. But gradually I noticed it was a great album. What makes a great album? I've told you before, all the songs should be good and you can feel a sense of unity running through it. Simple. The first two should be good but not so amazing that everything that follows will be a let-down, then when you expect to lose momentum, the 3rd, 4th and 5th should be better, then the 3rd quarter should be strong too in a slightly different way, and it ends with a proper ending and maybe something a little lullabylike. Formula! There's a fuckin' formula. Why doesn't everyone follow it?
This album follows the great album formula (well, let's be honest, it kind of defines my hastily concocted great album formula ...). The first two songs are upbeat chamber-pop with a dark undercurrent, the third quarter is a bit more rocking, the final chapter is wistful and sad. And the key, as so often, is the second quarter of the album, songs 3, 4 and 5, the loving, beating, heart. The songs are called 'Our Time Has Passed', 'She Heightened Everything' 'Bryte Side'. They're all bitter-sweet love songs, almost a song suite really. The first two are delightful, the third you will recognise, if you are a regular reader of this blog, as my favourite song in the world, in an even more long-lasting way than its parent album was, for a while, my favourite album.
Now, I've been on holiday so it's been a while since my last post, so I've had a good long time of re-listening to this album and the whole Pernice oeuvre and getting to grips with it all. I've listened to 'Bryte Side' a lot, more than for years. It's been lovely to revisit this old friend, and find it as healthy as ever.
It's a very slight song, just three minutes but pretty much over in the first two, just three short verses and not much of a chorus. It also has an alarming lyrical moment which I'm still uncomfortable with - the first verse ends with the line "another year does suicide" which is ugly and could surely have been avoided. Joe Pernice's writing is generally so free of lyrical awkwardness I feel it must be on purpose as it's not like there aren't other options of sorts which would scan ok. So, uneasily, I let it be.
The title - 'Bryte Side' - I love. The hint of irony which is all important. The song is about a love that has been and gone - weak fireworks eclipsed in the trauma ...the first two verses set that up.
And then, the third verse, which I easily and happily state is my favourite moment in the history of recorded music and is precisely the definition of what I love in pop music.
Strings are a cliche, but when they're right ... so as the verse begins, the swell, which seems to announce that something important is about to happen. This seems to be confirmed by the first half line - "I hope I never love anybody ..." then a momentary break "... the way we never really tried". The hint at grand heartbreak, then the bathos - just perfect. Then the image, the placing, which brings it to life "Skin tanning in a hot flash summer - I never was so terrified". Perhaps I myself particularly loved the song because the lyric implies the tanning is part of the terror - something any pale skinned dude can well understand!
But this, this verse here, is just the most perfect, most evocative moment I've come across. The title makes perfect sense now - 'Bryte Side', the tacky greetings card disavowal of true feelings, the sneer and shrug which makes thew heartbreak all the more evident. Kurt Cobain said it even more succintly 10 years earlier - "Oh well, whatever, never mind ..."
So there - a little insight into what I love in a song. The album contains more lovely moments - the fierce summer haze features throughout - how could i not love an album with a song called 'The Ballad of Bjorn Borg'.
I'd really give it a try. This is the highpoint for Joe Pernice, I'd say, though there are many more classy songs - there's been a novella based on the Smiths' Meat is Murder and a novel of his own (which I haven't read yet).
The voice is breathy and detached, the music is often more anglocentric than countrified - more in the jangly indie-pop sphere really. My compilation would be
Overcome by Happiness
Massachusetts - Scud Mountain Boys
Judy
7.30
Somerville
Our Time Has Passed
She Heightened Everything
Bryte Side
Grudge - Scud Mountain Boys
Weaker Shade of Blue
Conscience Clean (I Went to Spain)
Prince Valium - Joe Pernice
High as a Kite
Bum Leg - Joe Pernice
Newport News
Endless Supply
Chicken Wire
Cronulla Breakdown
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