Pitchfork

The title of the Pernice Brothers' live album and DVD could be a self-deprecating comment on the relentless obscurity that afflicts even the most talented and hard-working of indie bands, dogging them for album after album as their audience either grows incrementally or stagnates altogether. Or, possibly, it's a slight to the band's diehard fans who regularly turned up at shows to lend their shouts and applause to the background of this live recording.

Despite the title's tongue-in-cheek bitterness, we should at least give the Pernice Brothers the benefit of the doubt-- and not just because they thank their fans in the liner notes. The band, lead by real-life Pernice brothers Joe and Bob, has been creating letter-perfect pop since 1997, manufacturing three albums of songs wherein each lyric, each harmony, each bridge was precisely calibrated to elicit a particular listener response. As a result, albums like Overcome By Happiness and Yours, Mine & Ours sound so pristine, polished, and practiced that they can tend toward unexciting.

By definition, a live album like Nobody's Listening-- recorded at the Mercury Lounge in New York-- cures part of that problem in that no matter how much a band practices, each performance is affected by uncontrollable variables from crowd reaction to venue temperature to PA differences. Nobody's Listening adds a few much-needed blemishes to Joe Pernice's songwriting gems: Engineered and mixed by bass player Thom Monahan, the sound is rougher and more ragged but livelier and more dynamic than their studio albums. Joe Pernice's vocals are low in the mix, and sometimes he sounds like he's straining alternately to hit notes and to be heard. The keyboards on "Sometimes I Remember" sound dissonant and sub-Casiotone, and elsewhere instruments sometimes get lost in the mix.

In some cases, these factors might be considered flaws; on Nobody's Listening they lend the songs a sense of spontaneity. "Working Girls" now sounds as gritty as its subject matter. "Crestfallen" drips with disdain as Joe remarks "it's hard to read her simple mind." The raw guitars bring out the desperation and deprecation on "Grudge Fuck", a song from the Pernice brothers' previous band, the Scud Mountain Boys. Their cover of the Pretenders' "Talk of the Town"-- which is the only non-album track on Nobody's Listening-- rumbles along thanks to James Walbourne's piano and Patrick Berkery's drums. And "Flaming Wreck" ends with a noisy barrage of instruments that closes the show perfectly.

As documented on the Nobody's Watching DVD tour diary, the Pernice Brothers have spent most of the past seven years on the road, playing small clubs for varying audiences. That experience has made them a better live than studio band, as Nobody's Listening amply displays.