Audio CD review:
The Pernice Brothers - The World Won't End

The Pernice Brothers - The World Won't End

Band: The Pernice Brothers Title: The World Won't End Rating: Release Date: 05 June, 2001 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Working Girls (Sunlight Shines) 2: 7:30 3: Our Time Has Passed 4: She Heightened Everything 5: Bryte Side 6: Let That Show 7: Shaken Baby 8: Flaming Wreck 9: The Ballad Of Bjorn Borg 10: Endless Supply 11: Cronulla Breakdown

Editoral Review The World Won't End is far from an extended misery tract, though; well-versed in the canon of Bacharach, Wilson, and Big Star, Pernice has always reveled in loosing the most difficult of emotions into a rolling meadow of summertime pop. The second record by the Pernice Brothers, Joe Pernice's bright-eyed neo-country troupe, is an album that tackles themes of magnificent love, desperate frustration, and spirit-mangling depression. These 11 tracks are wrapped up in a gorgeous whirl of pedal steel, violin, and cello that is elegant, cathartic, and--best of all--really nice to listen to when the sun's out. "Our Time Has Passed" mulls painfully over the nostalgic memories of a dead love affair: "There's a box I still can't open / There's a name that hurts to say / I fall in love with the way I'm shaking/ In a crowd I think I see your face. " "Working Girl (Sunlight Shines)," meanwhile, is a brief but beautifully observed vignette of a young temp stuck in a dead-end job, left "contemplating suicide or a graduate degree. " Throughout, though, Pernice's sympathetic vocals, full of hope and purity, turn such empty impasses into a celebration of humanity. The message of The World Won't End? Simply that life goes on. --Louis Pattison .. You can see a complete list of all The Pernice Brothers discography, or go back to the The Pernice Brothers tabs