b'The Scud Mountain Boys did a lot in a little time. They released their debut, Pine Box, in January 1995 (featuring liner notes from Silver Jews David Berman). Their sophomore album, Dance the Night Away, arrived in February 1995. By the time they signed with Sub Pop Records just a few months later, theyd already written most of their third album, Massachusetts, which was recorded in October 1995 and released in April 1996.They ended up on the indie label due to the enthu-siasm of Joyce Linehan, who had managed the Providence, Rhode Island, band Six Finger Satellite and opened an East Coast office for Sub Pop. After discovering the Scud Mountain Boys via their split single with Steve Westfield & the Slow Band (whose side featured a guest appearance from Lou Barlow of Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr.), I did a little sleuthing, which was a lot harder back then, she says. It turned out that Joe and I had a lot of things in common. Were both from the eastern part of Massachusetts, and I knew his cousin, Joe Harvard. It was a small indie-rock world, and a small Boston world, so it was surprising that we didnt know each other already.The Scud Mountain Boys compressed career coincided with the heyday of the alt-country movement, and their songs dripped with pedal steel and bristled with twangy guitar licks. Given the austerity of their sound and the unhurried clip of their tempos, however, they arguably had more in common with slowcore acts like Low and Codeine than they had with yallternative groups like Son Volt and the Jayhawks. More crucially, Joe never felt like a country artist; as a singer, he had no southern drawl, and as a songwriter, he didnt pretend he had any experience with honkytonks or rodeos. He had nothing against the genre itself, but there were other sounds rattling around in his head. In fact, many of the pop elements that defined the Pernice Brothers were already present on the Scud Mountain Boys first three albums: an emphasis on mood and melody, a careful deployment of words'