Some established pop acts decide to dip their toes into electronic music in order to seem hip or update their image, but
Joe Pernice did it for a very different reason -- someone asked him. Budo (aka Josh Karp), a producer whose background is in electronic music and hip-hop, contacted
Pernice about remixing a track by
Pernice's no-longer-extant band
the Scud Mountain Boys, and the dialogue between the two led to an album-length collaboration, using the collective name
Roger Lion. While
Pernice isn't necessarily a guy who needed a writing partner, having penned a fistful of outstanding albums for
the Pernice Brothers (as well as his side projects
Chappaquiddick Skyline, Big Tobacco, and
the New Mendicants), he and Budo turn out to be a good fit, with the cool, open surfaces of these tracks meshing nicely with
Pernice's dour, smoky vocals and bittersweet lyrics that bring out the cynical side in just about any theme he chooses to investigate (which is hardly a surprise, given song titles like "The Adulterer's Mustache," "Redemption Is a Myth," and "Let's Divorce"). Though Budo's background is in electronic music, he's clearly put his skills to the service of
Pernice's songwriting and adapts comfortably to his style; most of these tunes are built around percussion loops and keyboards, but Budo hasn't tried to make them into dance tracks, and the mood of
Roger Lion is that of intelligent, polished, but playfully eccentric pop, with guitars and trumpets adding a classicist's touch, though Budo's production retains enough of his own personality that this consistently sounds like a meeting of two minds.
Roger Lion isn't likely to alienate
Pernice Brothers fans, but it does gently ease
Joe Pernice's music into a new direction, and he and Budo should consider giving
Roger Lion another go sometime in the future. ~ Mark Deming