#jale

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Kep1er

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JALE — NOT HAPPY

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[ungeschliffen]

[protector-ofthe-wilds]

Koda inhaled a deep breath, held it, and then raised her fist to knock. Barely twenty seconds after the last rap of her knuckle, and the familiar door swung half open, revealing a familiar face behind it. Jaledriel blinked eyes of wispy emerald once, his floppy ears fluttering as he peered down to view the visitor. The moment his gaze properly recognized Koda, that trademarked goofy smile sprung to life over his lips.

"Oh. Hey, kid." The door was opened the rest of the way as he properly greeted her, tilting his own body out of the way to allow her room to enter. "Welcome back."

As Koda stepped inside, the interior of Wintermoon Retreat welcomed her like an old friend. Everything was exactly where it had been during her last visit - save for the common area being a tad more messy. Jaledriel seemed to notice Koda's stare lingering on some unwashed dishes, and he giggled.

"You could probably guess, but Liev's been out. She and Ely had business back in Feralas." The man lifted a clawed finger to scratch through the thick lengths of emerald hair, past the leafy vines, and directly against his scalp. "Well, I should say that Er'lynn had business there."

"And they didn't bring you?" Koda seemed only half-invested in the answer, already moving to set her things down upon her window seat. The book she had started reading last time still sat upon a half-folded fur blanket; she shifted both to the side to sit down with a sighed exhale. The sound caught Jale's attention, a bushy brow quirking as he turned to face her.

"Yeah, uh...they had it under control. You alright?"

He transitioned into the inquiry so suddenly that Koda nearly didn't catch it. She looked up to see the gentle concern on his face, before promptly looking away.

"I bring news," she said after a moment, and she could feel the air around them immediately shift. Jaledriel was normally a jocular guy - the complete and total polar opposite to Liev - but when the moment got serious, the man would adapt. Arms folded over his broad chest, his biceps tightening to suggest some trepidation. A nod for her to continue, and she obliged.

"You've probably heard by now about the Dream Surges in the Isles, and the fact that the Druids of the Flame are working with Fyrakk to try and reach Amirdrassil, yeah?"

"Koda, I am a Warden of the Grove, bound to the Dream by the blood of the Green Dragonflight. Of course I'm aware of what's happening." Though he kept his tone steady, the reminder caused trepidation to turn to wrath; the wispy nature of Jaledriel's eyes sharpening into something more akin to flames.

Koda exhaled a frustrated sigh, pushing her fingers up through her hair. "Right, yeah, I know. Dumb question." A breath, and she continued.

"It's not just a threat anymore. They're actually going to be able to do it, Jale. They're bringing the Firelands to the Dream, and now they've got this...Runestone-thing they grabbed from Desolace to amplify their efforts."

Her building frustration boiled over, and the girl was suddenly on her feet, pacing steps back and forth through the room. "We tried to stop them from getting it, but we were too little, too late."

"It's not the only weapon they have in their arsenal," Jale replied slowly, his gaze following the girl. "Nor is it their greatest one."

"Yeah, but they didn't need another one, okay?!" Koda barked back, stopping on her next step to sharply turn and face him. "We could have stopped him! We were right there! Now everything is fucked and the Dream's going to burn!"

"The weight of Amirdrassil's fate is not your burden to carry, so you can just cut that out right now," Jale demanded, in the same sort of tone a father would take. It only served to frustrate her further.

"You're Dream-blessed, Liev's a Night Warrior, Ely's the champion of Aessina, Ryndolyn is the personification of the arcane, and Er'lynn's an actual green dragon!" The girl's voice tremored with the threat of tears, her arms thrown up into the air with exasperation. "What am I? Just a heretic's daughter, floundering about in the face of what I can't change! How can I call myself a protector of anything if I couldn't even do this?!"

"It's that sort of thinking that warped my other self into doing terrible things, Koda." Jale's tone swept into a low, rumbled warning. "Ghost chased after power, spurred on by the feeling of inadequacy and fear until it tore both himself and his family apart."

"Oh, so what? You think I'm going to go insane chasing after some sort of power? Become a heretic, like your alternative or my father?" Koda flashed her fangs in her anger - which was far too much of an affront against Jaledriel. She regretted it immediately, ears wilting even before he started to reply.

"You're putting words in my mouth that I've never spoken," he snapped back, though his tone almost immediately softened as he continued. "...because you're scared and you're lost and you're tired. I can see it in your eyes; hear it in your voice." His head shook slowly, his expression somber. "Talk to me, kid. You don't have to sit with this alone."

Koda liked to think that she had tough skin, but her family (this one - the one she had chosen) always seemed to know exactly how to lance straight through her defenses. And in this moment, where she was so scared and lost and mind-numbingly exhausted...well, his words had been almost too much to bear. Her anger was abandoned, traded for strangled sobs, and Jale wasted little time in crossing the room to wrap her up in his arms. It was a strong, solid embrace - the sort that made one feel like they were being put back together...or, at least, being kept from shattering into a thousand pieces on the floor.

"Trust me, kid, I get it. Probably more than anyone," he offered, quietly. A hand rose to stroke back her hair to get it out of her face as she wept. "So, go ahead, let it out. I've got you."

~~~

Koda sat with eyes bleary and puffy from her crying, a cup of tea held within her joined palms. She had, perhaps, cried a little more than she really felt comfortable with - hence the murmured apology she offered forward when Jaledriel returned from the kitchen with his own tea.

"I'm used to it with Ely," was Jale's teasing reply, that goofy grin back in place as he took a seat across from her. "That woman's cried enough to overflow the sea." His eyes squinted a little, his grin wavering. "Which has been mostly my idiot brother's fault."

"Ryndolyn's not a bad guy," Koda sniffled, and Jale snorted a laugh.

"Yeah, maybe not, but he's done some incredibly stupid things."

Koda's gaze averted down to her tea, and Jaledriel exhaled lightly, his grin settling until it was only a slight smile.

"Did you want to stay the night? You know you're welcome to."

Koda's head shallowly shook from side-to-side. "I've got...someone waiting on me. I have to head back." Jale nodded along, but his expression seemed conflicted - as if he wanted to argue against her decision. But, after a quiet moment, he resolved the feelings with a sigh.

"I know you've got your mission, kid, and I respect it. I do. We all heard the Traveler when he told you about your an'da. None of us question the validity of what you're doing; Thavenar needs to be stopped." The man leaned forward, elbows propped on his thighs as he tried to catch her gaze. She obliged, meeting his once-again wispy stare. "But you alone aren't responsible for saving the world, or the Dream, or anything at all, Koda. Don't allow self-imposed burden to break your spirit. I watched it happen with Ely, and I'd prefer it to not happen to you." He pauses, if only for a breath. "Come home often and recharge among the Wilds that love you. Allow yourself to rest. You can't sustain yourself if you're running all the time."

"Yeah," was Koda's terse reply, but there was something reflected across her expression that let Jale know she heard his words. That was enough to satisfy him, and so he sat straight again, nodding once.

"I'll share the news you brought with Liev and the others once they return, and we'll move accordingly." His tone then lightened as he continued. "For now, share this moment and tea with me, thero'shan of my beloved. Perhaps I'll recite a story before you go, if you'll allow this bard to play for you." A wide and warm grin punctuated his offer.

Koda could do little to stop a small smile from touching her lips, allowing her ears to relax at a comfortable incline as she relaxed into the window seat. The familiarity was...nice. Perhaps she could allow herself a moment to indulge in it.

"Yeah," she quietly murmured. "I think I'd like that."

[jale-kingkon]

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Pernice Brothers Interview: Writing to Live

Joe Pernice; Photo by Colleen Nicholson

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The album cover for Who Will You Believe (New West), the first album in 5 years from Pernice Brothers, features a close-up photo of a man who doesn't "care about being seen." That man, of course, is Joe Pernice, who formed Pernice Brothers over 25 years ago after the breakup of his beloved alt country institution Scud Mountain Boys. But while Pernice may be indifferent-to-averse to the idea of celebrity or even public persona, he's not trying to remain hidden, per se. The photo that graces the cover doesn't attempt to be flattering, nor a clean-cut design: It asymmetrically cuts off the brim and top of his hat, his right glasses lens frame, the bottom of his chin, and the back of his head. (Of course, the band name and album title is superimposed on his face.) It makes you pay more attention to Pernice than you otherwise would. What is he looking at? Why? In a way, it really fits Who Will You Believe, a record that exists on a separate plane from today's singer-songwriter albums that tend to be straight diary entries combined with biography or filled with Easter eggs and callbacks. Instead, Pernice, an accomplished writer in many different mediums, shows that he can write about almost anything. The possibilities are infinite.

When I spoke to Pernice over the phone earlier this month, he let me know that he was in the middle of a particularly fruitful period. "I've been writing more songs than I ever have in my life," he said. "I go through these periods where I have a manic blast." Indeed, whether or not Who Will You Believe was born from one of these spurts, the album gives you a sense for how he works. Neko Case duet "I Don't Need That Anymore" started with an off-hand remark his mom made about having a good figure when she "needed it;" Pernice took the line and turned it into a devastating country track about a dying love, replete with twangy, chiming guitars, string swells and steady mallet percussion. He processes the deaths of three important people--his cousin, Rhino executive Gary Stewart, and David Berman--in stunning strummer "The Purple Rain", referencing the last one not with cutesy lyrical winks and nods but ones that even casual Silver Jews/Purple Mountains listeners will pick up, respectfully showing his intentions to pay tribute. Of course, Pernice still finds room for ambiguity, clever wordplay, and fun atop it all, a true songwriter's songwriter. His penchant for cultural allusions remains strong, even in conversation. Referring to a recent day where he wrote 5 songs in a day, 3 of them keepers, Pernice said, " I felt like Sylvia Plath at the end of her life when he was in a manic state of making shit," before clarifying, deadpan, "That was before she put her head in the oven."

Sure, there are some tracks on Who Will You Believe that are purely sad or strange. Pernice croons on the slow "What We Had", atop acoustic guitars, tremolo electric plucking, and tambourine, "It's a comedy of errors, but it's sad / I think of what we had / It's hard to watch good love go bad." Instrumental waltz "A Song for Sir Robert Helpmann", meanwhile, juxtaposes strings, keys, drum rolls, and wordless vocalization, creepy and lurking. Its mood is inspired by Pernice's fear of Helpmann's role as The Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. "That movie scared the shit out of me when I was a kid," he said. "[Helpmann's] absolutely terrifying." Though these tunes occupy a singular mood, though, for the most part, Who Will You Believe is a fun album, Pernice's brightest and loosest sounding in years. "I always play with people who are good people. I've never made a record with an asshole," Pernice said. "When you get really good players who aren't just phoning it in, it's really cool." Past collaborators pervade the album, such as Joe's brother Bob and wife Laura Stein (formerly of Halifax indie pop band Jale). Toronto-based choral group Choir! Choir! Choir! help Pernice give his eulogies on "The Purple Rain", ending the album on an uplifting note. And his pop sensibilities, Beatles, Bowie, and Bacharach influences shine on "Not This Pig" and "A Man of Means", songs with baroque breakdowns and bouncy drum fills.

Ultimately, Pernice is one of those songwriters who views music as a satisfying puzzle. Though he writes all of his songs on acoustic guitar, theoretically making them easy to play solo live, the tunes undoubtedly shapeshift as he records them. He describes a song like "Hey, Guitar" as "a balls-out, heavy tune"--it's got massive electric licks layered atop jangly strumming and shiny keys, and ripping distorted squalling between verses, fading in and out at the end like an AM radio hit. "I don't think [it] will translate [live]," he said. "[But] you don't know whether [it's gonna be a train wreck] until you do it. Every song was a new song the first time." You can bet he's looking forward to figuring it out, one of the most thrilling parts of music to him. After all, it's only now he's just beginning to dive into an almost 20-year-old song, "Say Goodnight to the Lady" from 2005's Discover A Lovelier You. "I've been working on it lately, and it's started to feel like my song."

Pernice; Photo by Colleen Nicholson

I knew that Pernice had written at least "The Purple Rain" as part of a mourning process, but reading about the context behind Who Will You Believe, I tried to see if I could construct something more broad. Before writing the record, his son retired from playing high-level youth baseball, which Pernice coached, and Pernice went from being on a baseball diamond most of the week for over half of the year, to not being on one at all. As such, I asked him whether songwriting is a way for him to generally process any sort of life change. As it turns out, it's much more. "I write songs so I can manage to function," he said. "It's just a necessary thing for my well-being. It could be anything. The act of doing it is the thing that makes me feel good and not crazy. A lot of times, the subject might not even be all that important in that regard." And so I thought back about the album cover, wondering what Pernice was gazing at during the photoshoot, realizing that, too, doesn't matter. What he feels about songwriting is the way I feel about listening. Both of us--all of us--are just trying to take in the world as best as we can.

[insanveaci]

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Jale for Impact Magazine, November 1994

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Good morning, happy Sunday! ¡Buenos días, feliz domingo! ❄️😄

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