Who Will You Believe

The man on the front cover of 2024s Who Will You Believe, the eighth studio album from the Pernice Brothers, has a slightly scraggly beard with more salt than pepper in its coloring, and hes wearing clunky glasses and a truckers cap that appears to be holding back a shaggy mop of graying hair. Joe Pernice never seemed to care much about being a fashion plate, but this portrait suggests a man who may be aging out of his status as the witty misanthrope and pop savant who crafted instant masterpieces like 1998s Overcome by Happiness and 2001s The World Wont End. A careful listen to Who Will You Believe reveals that Joe Pernice is indeed older and wiser, and his cynicism has been buffered into something a bit sadder and more realistic. However, hes still a brilliant pop songwriter, with a melodic sense thats graceful and the source of dozens of intelligent earworms, and his lyrics are literate meditations on his difficult relationships with friends, lovers, and himself, with the bon mots appearing in steady succession. While 2019s Spread the Feeling, the first Pernice Brothers album in nearly a decade, was a splendid and satisfying return to the spotlight, Who Will You Believe sounds and feels like a more impressive, better crafted work. Pernices production gives the music just the right balance of warmth and chilly introspection, and his ability to draw sympathetic performances out of his studio band (including longtime sidemen Bob Pernice and Peyton Pinkerton on guitars) is as keen as ever. If Joe Pernice is a different kind of songwriter in 2024, the key can be found in his 2020 solo effort Richard, where he revealed a more intimate and emotionally unguarded side of himself. Who Will You Believe isnt as bare as Richard, either in its message or its execution, but the same personal trials that inspired that LP can be heard here. There isnt as much dryly witty snark in the lyrics, "I Dont Need That Anymore" (a duet with Neko Case) is more bittersweet than bitter in its backwards glance at a busted relationship, "How Will We Sleep" and the title cut speak of a need for compassion he isnt often willing to acknowledge, and "Hey, Guitar" sounds like an anthem for the uncertain young adults that populated his novella Meat Is Murder. The closing track, "The Purple Rain," is one of the most moving songs in Pernices catalog, an unsentimental but compassionate act of mourning friends and family who passed after the release of Spread the Feeling. Artful cynicism comes easy to intelligent twenty-somethings, but in your mid- to late fifties, lifes consequences add some depth to your perspective, and thats a big part of what makes Who Will You Believe so rich and rewarding. ~ Mark Deming