2026.06.04

Joe Pernice has spent 30 years fronting the Pernice Brothers and the Scud Mountain Boys, during which time he has worshiped Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb with a zealotry only matched by his peers’ esteem for Gram Parsons and Ian Curtis. Sunny, I Was Wrong, his first album of new material under his own name, makes a case for him as one of the greats of his generation: a pop classicist who devises ingenious melodies as vehicles for dark reminiscences. It’s an album full of gentle regrets and gnawing disappointments: so many cakes left out in the rain. Best is the closer, “It Got Away from Me,” which features Webb himself playing piano and offering a sympathetic shoulder. — Stephen Deusner

Spin’s Best Albums of 2026

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