Joe Pernice is the singer-songwriter behind The Pernice Brothers. His previous band was The Scud Mountain Boys, and he has also recorded under the name Chappaquiddick Skyline. He runs his own record label and has also published a book of poetry.
...this short, unassuming novella of 102 small pages captures more
of youth, with all its painful, mad obsessions and enthusiasms, and
all its longueurs, than any number of much longer books. If you've
ever been young and in love with a band, you have to read Meat is
Murder.
*Bookslut, 3/9/05*
Joe Pernice's take on the Smiths' Meat is Murder might be the best
in the series thus far...Part Dazed and Confused and part Virgin
Suicides, the book is a funny, elegiac rumination on the pains and
perils of adolescence—and the anodyne that certain albums can be to
an outsider being smothered by dullness and angst...By fashioning
his criticism as fiction, Pernice comes closest to evoking the
transporting and restorative effect a song can have.
*The Boston Phoenix, 7/8/04*
Meat is Murder is as droll as any of his songs, as its asthmatic
narrator recounts his days in a Catholic high school outside Boston
in 1985 and how his life was changed by the discovery of the
Smith's third album-on cassette, of course. His descriptions of
friends are priceless and sweet...
*Kathleen Wilson, The Stranger, November 19, 2003*
Pernice writes about the album the only way a true teenager
would-clumsily, overflowing with enthusiasm and praise, and
beautifully... the novella is a wonderfully brief, swift read that
nevertheless is as powerful as the greatest of EPs.
*Andrew Unterberger, Stylus magazine*
My personal favorite of the batch has to be Joe Pernice's
autobiographic-fiction fantasia on The Smiths' Meat Is Murder.
Stirring, evocative reading, and like the other two books, it made
me want to seek out and hear the music again.
*Michael Layne Heath, Tangents*
His (Pernice's) perceptive, poetic ear for unpicking the workings
of troubled inner lives is exceptional.
*Uncut*
What is it about the Smiths that prompts otherwise sane men to take
an 80s youth that heaven knows was miserable then and turn it into
a memoir? This singer-songwriter pens a pleasant semi-autobio about
how this witty band's least-witty moment saved him from Catholic
school, Reaganism and playing the bass poorly...
*Austin American-Statesman, 10/17/04*
The story never reaches a true resolution, but that's part of the
pleasure of it...Pernice takes pains to capture a teenage voice,
although the language refrains from self-pity...the dramatic
uncertainty of the language holds together the narrative.
*The Columbia Spectator*
However autobiographical this story might be, it's never
predictable or less than heartfelt. The narrator's classmates are
sketched fondly, his teachers with a little healthy malice and the
music with great affection.
*Newsday*
An essential purchase for any fan of good new rock-write in general
- a slim, confessional novella equal to anything written by Nick
Hornby
*Bandoppler Magazine*
It is beautifully written.
*The Times (London)*
Continuum... knew what they were doing when they asked songwriter
Joe Pernice to pay homage to the Smith's Meat is Murder.
*Austin American-Statesman*
Fans of Pernice's lyrical work in the Pernice Brothers and Scud
Mountain Boys will find the same qualities of his lyrical wordplay
used here, equal parts bitter and sweet...Pernice excels at evoking
the feeling that almost any listener of underground music first has
when encountering it, of stumbling onto a vein of something
previously unknown, but far more immediate than anything that's
come before.
*Tobias Carroll, Earlash*
Meat is Murder is a page-scorcher, especially when you see
Pernice's own experiences practically oozing from the text.
*Filter magazine*
Effectively captures the crushing blows and dizzying triumphs of
adolescence, particularly the sense of urgency involved in matters
of young love.
*The Berlin Daily Sun*
Pernice captures the essence of the anglophile UK indie lovers that
exist in little groups all over North America...Pernice's novella
captures [the] feelings of the despair of possibility, of rushing
out to meet the world and the world rushing in to meet you, and the
price of that meeting. As sound tracked by the Smiths.
*Drowned in Sound*
The novella by the leader of the lush, sad-eyed indie-pop band the
Pernice Brothers is full of mordant wit and real heartache. And his
fictional (though heavily autobiographical) tale of a tortured
Massachusetts high school student who finds solace by listening to
Morissey is a dead-on depiction of what it feels like when pop
music articulates your pain with an elegance you could never hope
to muster...[H]is tale of a lonesome boy, a Walkman, and Meat is
Murder does a brilliant job of capturing how, in a world that
doesn't care, listening to your favorite album can save your
life.
*The Philadelphia Inquirer*
With his astute perceptions and graceful language, the guy
[Pernice] can write circles around most of the popular novelists
today, and then whack them in the head later on with his
melody.
*Nighttimes.com*
Local singer/songwriter and now first-time novelist Joe Pernice
seems to have near total emotional recall, in the same way a great
athlete possesses top-notch muscle memory. The result is that the
bulk of his creative output proves to be as viscerally convincing
as it is deeply felt...His emotionally precise imagery can be
bluntly, chillingly personal...His well-developed sense of
character, plot and pacing shows that he has serious promise as a
novelist.
*Weekly Dig*
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