The break up record. Surely something that we’re all familiar with, and something that is inherently cool about the power of music: we can use music to identify certain moments of our lives as a sort of emotional shorthand. You hear a song, or a lyric, and it puts you in a place in the past, in the case of the break up record, a place that can sometimes be painful. There are surely more appropriate break up records than this one, but for me, this was the one that I remember as being the most significant. Not the most significant relationship, just the most significant break up record. I listened to this record while mowing the lawn in the hot hot Oklahoma summer, and thought to myself “if I could write this record, and get a band of my friends together and play this record for my ex, she’d come back weeping and appropriately apologetic, and we’d live Happily Ever After.” The emotional walls would break down at the climax of the 5th song, “Dimmest Star”, when the repeating pleading chorus of “Don’t Ever Leave…” hit. Well, the concert never happened, the break up did happen, and yet I’m still drawn to this record, and not just because it happens to be a little landmark for that period of time in my life.
Overcome by Happiness is the perfect Joe Pernice record. It combines the earlier sounds and lyrical themes of his alt-country band The Scud Mountain Boys with the current Pernice Brothers “jumping from century to century” pop sound. This record is unique in it’s little pigeonhole, though. It’d be the only record you might find in the “Baroque-Country” bin at the record store. There are no pedal steel guitars or banjo runs, it’s very string heavy and orchestral, but the content is more in line with the dark morality tales of Johnny Darrell combined with the old fashioned story song of the 50’s and 60’s (think less “Leader of the Pack” and more “El Paso” by Marty Robbins. Not literally, but it’s a closer comparison). You could actually make a checklist of topics you can expect in a great country song, and you’ll probably find a song to relate to. Frustration with your job, a la Johnny Paycheck? Check. Getting pretty suicidally morbid? Check. “It’s Been a Good Year for the Roses”-esque resignation over the end of a relationship? Check again, friend. And, much like George Jones, Joe Pernice works the polarity of the lyrics with the music. It’s just not satisfaction to moan your grief, you gotta be able to sing along with some nice harmony, too. Joe Pernice is also one of the few true poets around in pop music, so the words can and do pack as much punch as the melodies, both of which can be very powerful.
