Joe Pernice’s voice greets you with sweet breath, breadth and
warmth. The singer-guitarist’s return is always welcome, even if it’s
for a primarily covers album. It Feels So Good When I Stop, which will
strike fans as a perfectly Pernicean sentiment, is a novel soundtrack.
(The book’s out now too.) Pernice reads three short excerpts from his
book into the record, illustrating just what music has meant to his
narrator’s (his?) life. Working with most of his Pernice Brothers
cohorts, that old melancholic, melodic magic (Todd Rundgren’s “Hello
It’s Me”), blended with that sometimes sad, sometimes blissful
blue-eyed soul (“I’m Your Puppet” by Dan Penner and Spooner Oldham),
hasn’t lost a bit of its potency.
Listen to a sample from It feels so good when I stop
This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2009.