ALBUM REVIEW: Pernice Brothers Ponder the End on ‘Who Will You Believe’

The many lives of Joe Pernice have included frontman of multiple bands and solo projects, novelist, baseball coach, and TV writer. So much life lived can lead a man to come face to face with his own mortality, something Pernice did about five years ago when he experienced the significant loss of some important people in his life. As it happens, with death comes a deeper understanding of life’s preciousness. As he does best, Pernice has parlayed this complex panoply of feelings into songs for the first Pernice Brothers album in half a decade, Who Will You Believe.

Joe Pernice (photo by Colleen Nicholson)

Rendered in Pernice’s lovingly frayed-at-the-edges voice and signature timeless pop melodies played by longtime bandmates including actual brother Bob Pernice, Patrick Berkery, Laura Stein, Liam Jaeger, Michael McKenzie, and Joshua Karp, Who Will You Believe is a meditation on memory and friendship. Pernice is nostalgic, but not dwelling on what has been. “Hey Guitar” is a love letter to a weathered instrument’s stalwart companionship through uncertain times, and “December in Her Eyes” is a plea to a distracted confidant to help win back a disenchanted lover.

Sweet meetings of horns, strings, and guitars add extra levity to Pernice’s sometimes humorous, always heartfelt lyrics, even as he’s tackling the heavier stuff. “Look Alive” offers instruction to an undertaker on how to best present the song’s deceased subject to a grieving public, and “How Will We Sleep” imagines a man’s last moments before death, what it will look and feel like to take a final breath. A standout moment comes with the album’s conclusion, “The Purple Rain,” where a choir of voices lends a hymnal quality to a fond memorial for loved ones passed.

Pernice isn’t fearful of the end on Who Will You Believe, just readying himself for it. Not like a doomsday prepper, but more like a memoirist reflecting on all the best parts and leaving himself open to curiosity about what’s still to come. On the particularly pretty duet with Neko Case, “I Don’t Need That Anymore,” he examines all the qualities that help propel one in life — charm, grit, resilience, beauty — and, in a way, thanks them for their service and dismisses them. “I’m glad I had it when I needed it,” they sing in unison, like they’re passing the “it” down to another generation for safekeeping.

Pernice Brothers’  Who Will You Believe is out April 5 on New West Records.