The nebbish man sitting with his back to the wall in one of Dublin's more swanky hotels doesn't look like the kind of person who has fashioned The World Won't End, officially the Best Summer Pop Record of the Year. In fact, Joe Pernice makes the previous contenders for Best Summer Pop Records of the Year (Ash's Free All Angels and REM's Reveal) sound like Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music by comparison. But just how did he do it?
Pernice is your classic pop-music nerd, an immensely intelligent and forthright man who loves and hates with a passion. Sipping his cappuccino at lengthy, mannerly intervals, Pernice looks as if he should really be lecturing college students on the rise and fall of Western literature.
Indeed, if the music career doesn't work out, then Pernice's Masters in Writing could easily see him do just that. (It's no surprise to discover that in graduate school, Pernice was studying to be a professor.)
"As a kid, I'd dreamed of making records, but they were rock star dreams, and you lose those," he says. "I'd always liked music, and had always played in bands here and there. My first band, The Scud Mountain Boys, just happened while I was in graduate school. We made two records very quickly on an indie label in Northampton, Massachusetts. They were released and the press went crazy. We had record companies courting us, which was crazy, too.
"You hear of bands paying their dues, but we had probably played about 10 shows in total before we signed a record contract. I'd be in school, only to come home to have messages from the likes of Warner Bros for me on my answering machine. It was silly. We'd sit around and laugh about it. But then I started writing a lot, even as I was making those two records, even though I wasn't seriously thinking of getting into the business as a career option. But I loved writing songs and got lost in it."
Pernice has the best of both worlds. Operating in a band format and solo capacity, he has the luxury of flitting in and out of each whenever the fancy takes him. The Pernice Brothers' new album, The World Won't End, is the follow-up to the band's 1998's Overcome By Happiness. Last year's Big Tobacco by a solo Joe might not count, but if you take a closer look, they are records invested with the same heart, soul and parched sense of humour.
"It's pretty nice to be able to make all types of music. It's great to be able to come to Ireland and play on your own and with the band. It's a good balance. Both have their moments.
"Sometimes when I'm playing alone, any song I've written - and I have about 80 by now - is an option at any time. With the band, you have to rehearse a particular set to get it right. That said, playing with the band is much more thrilling. They're different things and if I had to choose I'd go for the band over playing alone.
"Is it too introspective by myself? No, it's just more fun with the band. You hear more sounds. As a musician, I feel like the weakest link in the band, and to hear the other musicians play their instruments is really quite exciting."
According to Pernice, it was deliberate on the band's part to make a muscular power-pop statement with the new record. It shows in the way the songs come out at you like a fist wrapped in a velvet glove, the way the melodies encircle your head like a halo, and the way the words express the darker side of relationships, like a diary you are not supposed to read.
"It's certainly got more muscle than the last record," Pernice agrees. "There's always a good amount of experimentation that goes into it - you never really know how it's going to turn out. I rarely listen to my own past records, but if I do it's always to hear places where the next time I can do better. It's not regret, it's more a feeling of waiting to grow even more in a creative way. We knew we wanted to step things up a little with this one. I can't honestly say we had a vision completely mapped out, but we knew we were in the zone."
Does he suffer from the typical artists' dissatisfaction, always wanting to do something better or different?
"A little of both. I always judge the making of a record on how I felt when we were doing it. If we were in the zone, or we felt we were really engaged in the process, then it's successful. Then, of course, you step back from it and try to look at it objectively, which is impossible.
"I've never felt regret, because it's all about the process. If you're into the process of the writing and recording, then it's all ready - you've done your work. But if you're hungry, you want to grow creatively and find new vistas - if only to indulge yourself.
"The real pleasure is in writing songs. I love to write and I do it for myself. I've done technical writing, copy editing and various freelance stuff in the past, but I feel that writing songs is my true vocation."
Some of the songs make their mark in a subversive way, with the sombre lyrics underpinning the sheer pop-glory celebration of the music. "I'm a dark guy, I definitely have that side to me," Pernice admits, draining the dregs of his coffee.
"For some reason, that's the area my music operates in. I'm a happy guy, too, but I'd be a lot less happy if I didn't make such sad music. This new record is more upbeat musically. Lyrically it's got death, desolation and despair - all the big ones. People have also said to me that the album title is optimistic. Maybe - it depends on how you stress the word 'won't'."
The World Won't End is on Independent Records. The Pernice Brothers play R≤is∅n Dubh, Galway, tonight and Whelans, Dublin, tomorrow