Pernice Brothers-Overcome By Happiness (1998)

 

Artist: Pernice Brothers

Title: Overcome By Happiness

Label: Sub Pop

Format: CD

Cat: SP CD 427

Year of Release:1998

Country and Year of Edition: US 1998

Sell Price: $3.99 VG+/VG+ 

Discogs Last Sold: 1/21/23 NM/VG+ $4.95

Low:$1.50

Median: $3.99

Average: $4.84

High: $15.96 NM/NM

Current low price: $2.00 VG/VG

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 20

Have/Want: 449/42

Where Sold: Milwaukee, WI

Time it took to sell:  11 years

Where and When Purchased: internet used

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B

Sad To See It Go: No

There is a catchphrase that gets thrown around, "white people problems."  The crux of it is problems of the upper middle class, be it wearing a "Monkey Suit" or pushing buttons all day long.  Joe Pernice seems to specialize in these sort of ruminations, late 90's style.  The internet as a mass communication media had just begun.

Back in 1998 this was a big critics record and I remember an female engineer telling me she liked them quite a bit.  Maybe even worked with them.  I always pegged them for Western Mass, but it seems like Joe was a Dorchester, MA guy, home of shootings second only to Roxbury (at least when I lived in Boston) as well as birthplace of New Kids On The Block.  So who knows if all this orchestra polish is all a ruse of a darker underbelly.

The sound is somewhere between Teenage Fanclub and The Left Banke in terms of indie "rock."  It took me a few times to listen start to finish to get through it end to end awake, but the first couple times I got through it enough to start to know the material and have some favorites.  When it came out, I bought it at the end of the year and had intended to listen to it a little deeper than I did, but that day never came until it sold 25 years later.

So the initial question of whether this was a C or C- became is it a B or B+.  While there were enough songs that grew on me like the aforementioned "Monkey Suit" or the song after it "Chicken Wire" or the opener "Crestfallen,"  there was a bit of dated late 90's.  I'm always grateful when there isn't some asshole with a laptop in the mix, but the strings and piano kind of fill that zone.  That wasn't the issue for me, it was the combination with that certain alterna-rock striving to be commercial sound that invaded indie rock in the time period.  Muted for sure, but annoyingly there.

Reasonable orchestral "pop" for those who would consider listening to such a thing.