King of Pain

IF WE OREGONIANS need a quick primer on Joe Pernice, think an
East Coast Willy Vlautin (but without the booze and betting slips).
Both are remarkably skilled musicians—songwriters first, singers
second—and authors, stumbling down the fine line between cult
literary icon and underappreciated bandleader of acts more popular over
the pond than back on their respective coasts. While Vlautin’s Richmond
Fontaine deals in hazy country-tinged barroom tales, Pernice is a pop
obsessive, pining for the days of ’70s AM hit makers in his dozen or so
albums recorded under various monikers (Scud Mountain Boys,
Chappaquiddick Skyline, and in recent years, the Pernice Brothers).

While the tempo of Pernice’s music has evolved over the years, his
simple template—heart-shatteringly depressing songs masked in
swelling, upbeat pop arrangements—has not. His wounded characters
gulp exhaust fumes in garage suicide attempts, torch the grain silo
when scorned by a lover, fall from the sky in airline crashes, and all
the while the music soars around them with a cheerful indifference. If
the song appears at the end of his pen, there are no clear winners,
just relatable souls crushed beneath the unbearable weight of
existence. Yet Pernice’s constant theme of despair is absolutely
genuine, acting as humble narrator through it all, never proselytizing
to the listener as he offers up another emotionally crippling dose of
sad songs cloaked in cheery arrangements.

The most recent record from Pernice is barely that, more a companion
soundtrack to his debut novel, It Feels So Good When I Stop.
Hardly his initial foray into the publishing world, Pernice has
buffered countless tours to empty rooms (domestically) and musical
acclaim (overseas) with a growing shelf of published works—a book
of poetry, a limited-edition collection of lyrics, and The Smiths:
Meat Is Murder, his contribution to the 33 1/3 series of music
books. Yet while other musicians pad the ego by miraculously getting
their words reprinted in book form—Jewel’s unintentionally
hilarious A Night Without Armor and Billy Corgan’s poetry
trainwreck Blinking with Fists come to mind—Pernice carved
out his legacy as a gifted writer long before It Feels So Good When
I Stop found its way to fiction shelves. The terrific novel fits
within Pernice’s comfort zone; a reluctant coming-of-age tale of life
spent in the margins, complete with broken hearts, empty bottles, and a
deep obsession with music.

“Every day, 10 am to 2 pm, those were the hours to write,” Pernice
explains, discussing his devotion to completing the novel without being
distracted by music. “I kept recording, playing music, and writing
until the day I signed the [book] contract, then I put it aside until I
finished.” His nearly year-long absence from the helm of the Pernice
Brothers was the longest songwriting gap in his prolific career, but
the musical accompaniment to the novel—fittingly titled It
Feels So Good When I Stop (Novel Soundtrack)—finds Pernice
back behind a mic covering songs that play a role of intrigue to the
book’s unnamed narrator. Del Shannon’s “I Go to Pieces” is transformed
into a gorgeous sweeping pop number, and Pernice’s breathy delivery
adds a new level of stark intimacy to Todd Rundgren’s ’70s slow-dancing
staple, “Hello it’s Me.” Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow also makes a cameo, not
on the record (although Pernice does contribute a spot-on cover of his
“Soul and Fire”), but in the novel itself.

“Even though we were on the same label and we lived miles away from
each other, we’ve never met,” says Pernice. “I wrote to him and said,
‘I want to make you a character in my book. Don’t worry, you’ll be a
decent guy in the book.’ He wrote back and said, ‘Thanks for asking, go
right ahead, and you can turn me into a dick if it’s more
appropriate.'”