It Feels So Good When I Stop ( Novel Soundtrack)

With Scud Mountan Boys, Chappaquiddick Skyline and Pernice Brothers, singer-songwriter Joe Pernice has always informed his music with a literary eye to accompany his sweet, soulful country-rock. It Feels So Good When I Stop is the accompanying soundtrack to Pernice’s novel, The Young Accuser, about a young man’s coming of age as the occasional leader of a fictitious band whose life is lived out by the soundtrack in his mind, brought to brilliant life by Pernice’s own sympathetic renditions. Del Shannon’s “I Go to Pieces,” Sammy Johns’ ‘70s hit “Chevy Van,” Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn’s “I’m Your Puppet,” Tom T. Hall’s “That’s How I Got to Memphis,” Todd Rundgren’s “Hello It’s Me,” and Boston contemporaries such as the Dream Syndicate (“Tell Me When It’s Over”) and Sebadoh (“Soul and Fire”) come together as one flowing, unpretentious collection of love songs, complete with brief spoken-word narratives pulling the errant strands together. Pernice is that rare performer who can pull off his grand ambitions with even greater modesty.