Pernice Brothers “Grudge F*** (2006)”
Scud Mountain Boys “Grudge ****”

Stop the presses! Two days in a row with 2006 content! (Well, sorta.)

Massachusetts native Joe Pernice has a smooth and increasingly smoky voice that recalls the Zombies’ Colin Blunstone at time, a bad attitude and a gift for insidiuosly catchy melodies.

In the mid-90s he applied these tools to a usually mellow country-rock, in retrospect really eschewing the “alt,” as frontman of the Scud Mountain Boys. His songs fleshed out a sublimely fatalistic vision of low-rent, working-class living that was in some ways uniquely Western Mass. On that group’s great final record, 1996’s Massachusetts, Pernice uncorked what felt like his pinnacle song, “Grudge Fuck.” (I mean, let’s speak plainly here.)

The Scuds took a pristine AM gold melody that could’ve been the result of some sort of Jim Croce-Bread collaboration, and ran it through a dive-bar last-call atmosphere worthy of early Waits. And indeed, it’s a late night tale: the song’s speaker lays down a pretty heavy rap of self-loathing: he’s sloshed, he’s stoned, he’s pleading for his old girlfriend to let him come over.

Some of us may have been to a place like this at one time or another. C’mon, baby. Remember the good times? Whatever happened to us? We’re friends. Friends can cuddle, right? Do you think, just one last time… (I’ll equivocate slightly and at least admit to this song’s setting off the fake nostalgia bells that I so often seek to ring.)

It’s such a pathetic ploy for ex sex–we know he’s lying when he says, “I swear to G-d I’d never touch you,” because after all, “I’d give anything to make it with you/just one more time”–that it crosses over, in and of itself, to bleakest dark comedy.

Ah, but the plot thickens. You see, the song’s not called “Mercy Fuck,” which is what he’s asking for. The implications of the title are postively sinister–namely, it’s all a ruse, this isn’t about lonely desperation but something closer to calculated revenge.

I told you Joe Pernice has a bad attitude.

On last months’s new release Live a Little, the Pernice Brothers, Joe’s going concern in more of a classic pop style, close out with a ten-year anniversary revisit of “Grudge Fuck.” This is clearly designed to: (a) revive the tune, (b) acknowledge it as maybe Joe’s best song, indeed one of the few Scud tunes to carry over to the Bros’ live set, (c) make me say, “Holy shit, I’m getting old,” or (d) all of the above.

The revision is slight. You can just barely hear the cigarettes consumed between 1996 and 2006 sexing up Joe’s vocal chords. The piano’s tinnier, the bass incrementally showier. There’s strings now, but not too sappy, and backing vocals, perhaps a little too sappy.

What’s interesting is that Joe’s muse has moved slightly upscale over the last decade. His chosen subject has moved on from van drunks and scratch ticket addicts to clock-watching temps and dayjob wage slaves in monkey suits. He’s a little more Moz/Elvis C. and a little less, well, mopey version of Croce/Bread. “Grudge Fuck” still carries with it that whiff of the downscale days, so it’s a tad–just a tad, really–out of step with his newer work as a result.

But here’s the thing: my initial reaction to a new Pernice record, at least after the Bros.’ ridiculously poppy and upbeat (sounding) second effort, The World Won’t End, is usually muted. His grasp of pop songwriting craft is so complete that I need to let the discs grow on me. It’s almost too much beauty. I need to give the songs time, need to mine the veins where I’ll find personal resonance.

So, in terms of instant gratification, it’s nice to pick up a Pernice disc and know right away that I love one of the songs on it.

Live a Little at Newbury Comics. (and at iTunes.)
Massachusetts at Target. (and at iTunes.)