Categories : Folk + Roots, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 2 / 5 Reviewer: Kevin Hartford |
The Pernice Brothers’ fifth studio album, Goodbye, Killer, is the musical equivalent of a bowl of regular-flavour oatmeal. There’s a lot of nutrition in that bowl – vitamins, complex carbohydrates, fiber – but without sugar and flavouring it’s sort of just a bunch of beige-coloured mush. Goodbye, Killer has a lot of good in it, too – the songwriting, singing, and guitar-playing are all competent and above-average – but every song operates on such an even emotional keel that not once do the Pernice Brothers threaten to become anything other than mildly amiable.
‘Not the Loving Kind’ and ‘Goodbye, Killer’ are almost-ballads too peppy to be cathartic and too mopey to be straightforward pop. On ‘The Great Depression,’ frontman Joe Pernice repeats “I never want to die,” but without urgency, despair, defiance, or conviction. On ‘Newport News’ he sings, “My love is so easy to leave,” even though he doesn’t seem terribly upset about it. There’s little emotional connection to be made here.
There’s also that nagging, persistent feeling you might be listening to a so-so Tom Petty album. Like Pernice, Petty is an artist who rarely gets out-and-out cathartic in his music, but unlike Pernice, Petty is so skillful in crafting hooks and playing with vocals you’re unlikely to ever notice. On Killer, it’s all you notice: no highs, no lows, just the same middle-of-the-road song playing over and over again.
