Overcome By Happiness

Pernice Brothers

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 19, 1998)
• Original Release Date: May 19, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sub Pop
• ASIN: B000006OJH
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #60,858 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com's Best of 1998

Joe Pernice is to the Eastern Seaboard what Elliott Smith is to the Pacific Northwest: anything but happy, the ex-Scud Mountain Boy forgoes the cowboy Bread covers and surrounds himself with Van Dyke Parks/Brian Wilson-like orchestral arrangements, singing sad, sad songs about suicide and dead love in his fragile warble. Strangely, this makes for a bright gem of a disc filled with 1973-AM-pop-radio-worthy jewels. --Paige La Grone

Amazon.com

Joe Pernice's former band, the Scud Mountain Boys, often dragged a kitchen table and chairs on-stage to replicate the homey feel of their spare and haunting music. Pernice's voice was lovely in that setting--his shy velvet voice floated over the stark horizon of the Scud's country-ish tunes. Here, though, he packs the stage with piano, cello, violin, tympanum, harp, trombone, and even a flugelhorn for a baroque wall of sound, and any hints of country are traded in for Bacharach. While the arrangements are beautiful, and Pernice continues to write amazing and evocative songs, his lovely wisp of a voice is hidden amid all the flowery flourishes. He used to sound lonely on the range, now he sounds lost in the forest. --Tod Nelson

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not enough superlatives to describe it, July 9, 2001

By	pm444 "pm444" (Okemos, MI USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

I bought this two years ago and it's never far from my CD player. There's something about the lyrics and the hook-filled music that will not let go of you once you've heard it. The Amazon.com review compares Joe Pernice to Elliot Smith, and there are some strong similarities, but unfortunately, Pernice has not yet attained the sort of public recognition that Smith has. Both write sad lyrics about lost love, rejection, and other depressing topics, both deliver them in unique voices that are not exactly beautiful but fit the songs well, and both compose music that is achingly beautiful.

There is not a bad song on this CD, but there are a few that are my all-time favorites: "Crestfallen" deals with the painful realization at the end of a love affair that things were not as one thought while the affair was still on: ("it's a long way down, when you find out that it never happened at all"). "Wait to Stop" has the line "I want to be with you so bad I feel like I'm dying, or I've died", and then at the end, repetition of the line "I'm waiting for the wait to stop" which goes on and on. "Wherein Obscurely" has the line "there were so many times I had to wake you from crying; so many times I could not make you cry", sung so hauntingly that it's enough to make you want to cry yourself, even after hearing it hundreds of times.

So, you get the idea. These aren't sappy love songs at all, but searingly painful confessions made even more powerful by the incredibly beautiful music to which they are set. There are other CDs with Joe Pernice, the Pernice Bros., and the Scud Mountain Boys, and all are very good, but this is my favorite.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Plenty to like here., July 16, 2001

By	Stephen Doig (New Zealand) - See all my reviews

On recommendation from reputable UK music magazine Uncut I gave 'Overcome By Happiness' a spin, and true to form it deserves it's glowing reviews. The Pernice Brothers are justly considered to be right up there with the likes of Lambchop, Flaming Lips, and Willard Grant Conspiracy in the resurgence of American Rock/Alt.Country, however their sound veers closer towards string-laden pop. What Pernice Brothers do well, and they do it very well, are adding lovely symphonic touches and melodic inflections which lift a good song into an airborne one. When the strings flood in two-thirds of the way through the title track and Joe Pernice sings ".. you, don't feel the waves crashing out of your eyes" the musical tsunami hits. Similarly, the repeated refrain in 'Wait to Stop', the fragile piano arrangement in 'All I Know' and opener 'Crestfallen' all achieve spine-tingling bliss. Though not every track reaches such heights, these few songs are still fine in themselves and the album nothing if not a wholly enjoyable listening experience.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars haunting & beautiful, February 24, 1999

By A Customer

What this really reminds me of is an album released a couple of years ago called "A Life Full of Farewells" by an Australian band, The Apartments. Though Joe Pernice and the rest of the world would never have heard it, and Joe seems to still have a hold on some innocence long lost to Apartments songwriter Peter Walsh. Like that album, this is classic, baroque chamber pop, with irresistible melodies that follow you round, and haunt your days (and nights).