Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 04/08/2003
Label: One Little Indian

Whether in his Pernice Brothers cloak, as Chappaquiddick Skyline or as a Scud Mountain Boy, Joe Pernice has effortlessly refined the art of the cryptic lyric atop delicate melody. Think vinegar poured on flowers. Think Stephen Merritt of the Magnetic Fields, or even Morrissey when he lays off the Charles Hawtrey impressions. A one-man Brill Building: he writes melody as other people dream.

Reading from the same power pop script as Teenage Fanclub or Fountains Of Wayne, 'Yours, Mine & Ours' proves no exception. Seamlessly chasing 2001's classic 'The World Won't End', Pernice easily dispatches another ten tracks of harmonic poetry in that strange whispered voice of his.

Opener 'The Weakest Shade Of Blue' is familiar terrain - as in 'classic', like you're sure you've heard this before. The protagonist is as "lonely as the Irish Sea" and "as willing as the sand" while requesting that the listener "light me up like a lemon grove". He then testifies that "the love I have for you, is terrible and true" while an uplifting concoction of guitars jangle joyously like The Byrds' 'Lady Friend'. Utilising opposites - sour lyricism vs ear candy - is a trick Pernice never tires of and it's a trick that works well.

'Water Ban' uses drought as a metaphor for lost love - "It's hard to understand the cruel, cruel summer of a water ban, the dead grass cradled round the water can, to hold our prayer for rain" - while 'One Foot In The Grave' pounds like Doves to complete the open triumvirate. 'Baby In Two' cuts the pace sharply, sounding something like REM's 'Drive', before different shades of the palette are utilised on the mournful ballad 'Judy', the choppy rhythms of 'Sometimes I Remember' and the doleful 'How To Live Alone'.

If there's one complaint of Pernice LPs it's that sometimes there's just too much going on. Melody hits melody hits melody until the production becomes so condensed that the idiosyncrasies become disguised. It's like too much ice cream at first sitting, though repeated listens reveal the magic.

So persevere. Savour Joe's falsetto in the fadeout to 'Deeper Shade Of Blue', the three-way harmonies on 'One Foot In The Grave' and when he sings about "trying to smash your heart into a thousand summers" on 'Waiting For The Universe'. Such are the moments where a good record becomes great. And to anyone that contends they don't make them like they did anymore: listen to this. They still do.

    by Adam Webb