Blowin' Indie Wind Pete Yorn--Shedding the Hangover

Author: Erika Mercer

"If I try to forget something, that's when I end up remembering it."
Pete Yorn's recent release, "Day I Forgot," puts this statement to music. It is the snapshot memory that is indelibly marked on your consciousness, the image or scene from long ago that recurs in your mind.
Perhaps it is faded, perhaps it is ragged around the edges, but it cannot be overlooked. Sometimes you might worry that you've forgotten it, sometimes you might wish to forget it and sometimes you might proclaim that you have forgotten it, yet its memory remains.
Hailing from Montville, N.J., Yorn, the son of a dentist father and school-teacher mother, became acquainted with music at age nine when he taught himself to play drums.
Three years later he picked up guitar, beginning by playing songs by his music idols the Smiths and the Cure - at times he even attempted a British accent.
"I thought I was a mini-Morrissey," he commented in an interview. "Then I realized, 'You should have your own voice, Pete,' but that took time." Yorn eventually began writing songs of his own, but it wasn't until 1990 that he made his first public singing debut at Montville High School's talent show, where he (fittingly) performed the Replacements' hit, "Talent Show" and Neil Young's "Rockin' In the Free World."
Throughout his college years at Syracuse University, Yorn continued writing music, moving after graduation to Los Angeles to form a band with several close college friends that played under Yorn's name at local venues. In addition, he joined a punk band, Million, and began raising funds to make an album independently.
Not long thereafter, Yorn landed a record deal after an acoustic performance of his song, "Life On A Chain," at a local L.A. bar, CafÈ Largo, impressed Hollywood producer Bradley Thomas who, along with placing several of Yorn's songs on the soundtrack to the Farrelly Brothers' film, "Me, Myself and Irene," also invited Yorn to compose the film's score.
The soundtrack was released in July 2000, followed eight months in March 2001 by Yorn's first solo album, "musicforthemorningafter," released on Columbia Records.
Heralded by critics as the rebirth of rock, Yorn's "musicforthemorningafter" catapulted the New Jersey native to fame, and it wasn't long before he was playing to sold-out crowds at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom.
Yorn commented on the album, "I made this record and I didn't compromise at all creatively. I didn't write songs that I thought might get on the radio or people might like. I just made a record of songs that I like and music that made me feel good when I was driving around in my car."
This motivation is apparent in "musicforthemorningafter," described by critics as honest, gritty and heartfelt.
On "musicforthemorningafter," Yorn combines influences ranging from Wilco to Gram Parsons, yet ends up with his own unique sound.
"At the end of the day, it's my own thing," he explains. "I definitely rip off everyone I love, but I'm not that good at it."
On April 15, Yorn released his sophomore album, "Day I Forget," on Columbia Records.
If his first release was music for the morning after, then "Day I Forgot" is music for the morning after that.
More autobiographical and introspective, while at the same time somewhat louder and more rocking, "Day I Forgot" begins when the hangover ends and the real world starts.
Shorter, tighter, yet still very much in the same style, Yorn's new album - on which he plays almost all of the instruments - retains the charm but lacks the epic greatness of "musicforthemorningafter."
It is not a masterpiece but a solid album, a collection of catchy, polished and authentic songs.
Once again, Yorn shows that he can be both bad-ass and sophisticated.
He boasts lively songs such as "Burrito," a fun-filled power-pop piece about "hanging around in front of the 7-Eleven when I was a teenager living in Jersey and eating too many of those microwave burritos while waiting to go over to the house of the first love I ever had."
At the same time, directly preceding "Burrito" is "Turn of the Century," a mournful waltz about a relationship falling apart, in which Yorn sings, "Saw my reflection, covered in glass / How it reminds me of you / Broken like a vision, an unfinished season / Terror had struck me, but all I could see is your soft skin."
"Day I Forgot" repeatedly offers such snapshot images of Yorn's life, pieced together into an album of songs as memories.
Sometimes regretful, sometimes contented and always nostalgic, Yorn's release is an effort to simultaneously remember and forget.
While not as massive as "musicforthemorningafter," "Day I Forgot," is a commendable sophomore effort from an artist who still has much up his sleeve.