Pernice Brothers – Who Will You Believe
Pernice Brothers – Who Will You Believe
Format: CD – Vinyl LP – Cassette – Digital
Label: New West Records
Release: 2024
Release date: April 5, 2024
The Pernice Brothers return with ‘Who Will You Believe’ on April 5 via New West Records. The 12-song set is their first in five years and was produced by Joe Pernice
The album includes contributions from longtime bandmates, Bob Pernice, Patrick Berkery, Laura Stein, Liam Jaeger, Michael McKenzie and Joshua Karp, lush string and horn arrangements, the Toronto-based choral group Choir! Choir! Choir!, as well as Neko Case on the duet “I Don’t Need That Anymore.” Who Will You Believe is the band’s first new album since marking their 25th anniversary by reissuing their acclaimed 1998 debut Overcome by Happiness as a deluxe edition last year.
Joe Pernice has crafted a remarkable catalog that boldly reinterprets and recasts classic American pop. Balancing moments of solemnity with warm humor and camaraderie, Who Will You Believe may be his most moving and nuanced album yet.
The band shared their duet with Neko Case, the album highlight “I Don’t Need That Anymore.” Joe Pernice says, “‘I Don’t Need That Anymore’ is one of the rare songs of mine that started with a lyric hook instead of a melody. My wife and my octogenarian mother were looking at the latter’s sixty-six year old wedding album. My wife said to my mother, ‘Wow! You Had some figure.’ Not skipping a beat, my mother said, ‘I had it when I needed it.’ I immediately sent myself a text that read ‘I’m glad I had it when I needed it. But baby, I don’t need that anymore.’”
In a single six-month stretch in 2019 Joe Pernice was left reeling from the deaths of two friends and a close family member. “That was such a bad stretch of time. When things settled some I was thinking about them a lot and doing my best to try and take nothing for granted.” Those tragedies inspired “The Purple Rain,” which concludes the album and ranks among his finest songs. In the chorus he sings: Remember me to her
sea-bound train. Remember me to her fruited plains. Purple mountains and purple rain won’t always separate the shining seas. The wake is washing over me.
“It’s an homage to some friends and family I lost, but it’s also about the dread of potentially losing intangible things that I thought would always be there,” Pernice says.
Website: https://www.pernicebrothers.com/
Tracks:
01. Who Will You Believe
02. Look Alive
03. Not This Pig
04. What We Had
05. December in Her Eyes
06. A Song for Sir Robert Helpmann
07. Hey, Guitar
08. A Man of Means
09. I Don’t Need That Anymore (feat. Neko Case)
10. Ordinary Goldmine
11. How Will We Sleep
12. The Purple Rain