Around the release of his first album, Pete Yorn was occasionally
compared to a young Bruce Springsteen. It makes sense, I suppose; both are
from New Jersey, both are signed to Columbia, both have average-joe first
names. Unlike Bruce, though, Pete isn't really a 'savior-of-rock' kind of
guy. Humble singer-songwriter types rarely these days. With hip-hop
developing into a sort of lingua franca, it takes the brashness of an Andrew
W.K. or the indifference of the Strokes to qualify as the next Great White
Hope.
Yorn's 2001 debut, 'musicforthemorningafter', was great because it found
its mellow groove and stuck to it. A sometimes folky, sometimes rocking,
often rapturous collection of heartsongs, 'music' deftly emphasized Yorn's
strengths - his distinctive voice and shimmering acoustic guitar - and
surrounded him with spare, spacious arrangements that brought a warmth and
sense of place fo each tune. The result was a great Sunday-morning record
that rocked in a traditional way but managed to avoid Hootie and the
Blowfish dismissability. It was a promising debut that established Yorn as
one to watch, and positioned him in a corner of kind-of-alternative rock
that he had all to himself, at least until this John Mayer punk came along.
Which brings us to the follow-up, 'Day I Forgot', where our hero steps up
to the plate again and knocks the cover off the ball. Right? Well, not
quite.
To work from the outside in, the artwork for 'Day I Forgot' so closely
resembles that of 'music' that the photos might have come from the same
shoot. Yorn's hair is a bit longer and he's wearing a different vintage
t-shirt, but that's about it. So already there are signs we're about to
travel a familiar road.
And 'Day I Forgot' does sound very familiar. It sounds so much like
'musicforthemorningafter', in fact, that I'm not sure why it isn't as good.
Things start out well enough. On 'Come Back Home' Yorn's voice comes in
way above a little Casiotone-sounding beat a few moments before the drums
take full shape and the rest of the instruments swell in to join him. It's
an exciting moment, but it's one of few to be had.
After 'Come Back Home' the album settles (or rather, sinks) into a
sound-alike vacuity, rising from its slumber only in fits, which can be
called fits only because everything around them is so dull. In advance, let
me say that reviewing this album was a challenge, because how do you
describe blandness?
Yorn often trades in the scaled-down simplicity of his debut for a more
full-bodied band sound. 'Crystal Village' starts with Yorn intoning the
lines 'Take my hand/Come with me' over a lilting Cat Stevens-esque guitar
line, then kicks in with a walloping beat. By the second verse Yorn's
multi-tracked voice is floating atop several waves of electric guitar.
'Carlos (don't let it go to your head)' rides a chunky Led Zep riff in
and out of clouds of guitar, with Yorn's effected voice droning lyrics about
nothing in particular. For someone who's been pushed as a
singer-songwriter, Yorn's lyrics don't cut it a lot of the time. I'm
usually inclined to be forgiving on this point, but when it's your bag, when
the words are supposed to be the center of the song, shouldn't they be
saying something? Yorn opts for obtuseness almost all of the time, but it's
the sort of opaque obtuseness that nearly defies interpretation.
Take the first few lines of 'All at Once': 'Every now and then I get
like this/And it isn't hard to see/But the old man in the kitchen/I think
he's part of me.' Huh? Or these lines from 'Turn of the Century': '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/And I wondered.' Yeah, me, too. I suppose it the desire was there
someone could relate to lyrics like this, but to me it seems like
diminishing returns.
For someone who claims Springsteen as an influence and has gone so far as
to record the evocative landscape-song 'New York City Serenade', you'd think
Yorn would try a little harder.
Admittedly, the lyrics to 'musicforthemorningafter' after weren't quite
Sylvia Plath, but the melodies took up the slack. As Oasis abundantly
proved, if you can only have one, it's better to have the melody. But
Yorn's melodies often plod this time around, the hooks aren't that hooky,
and it's a challenge to remember much of anything about the songs once
they're over. It often seems that the verses are merely preludes to the
inevitable 'repeat chorus to fade-out' ending. 'Crystal Village' starts out
strong enough, but Yorn rides the coda into the ground, hitting us again and
again with a melody that isn't really good enough for all that attention.
'Carlos' also shows promise, but Yorn's self-conscious speak-singing blows
it, and again, the song's central riff isn't *that* good.
The blah-ness pervading 'Day I Forgot' almost makes one reconsider Yorn's
debut, because two records cut from such similar cloth shouldn't be so far
apart in quality. I mean, the guy's singing with the same low, sonorous
voice he used two years ago, but this around he sounds almost comatose. In
retrospect, 'musicforthemorningafter' was an artful balancing act,
downplaying Yorn's weaknesses and presenting him in the most favorable light
possible. This new batch of songs is just a bit weaker, and Yorn's style
isn't brassy enough to make them sound exciting.
'Day I Forgot' is a well-groomed, well-produced bore, too timid to strike
out in any real new direction, and unable to make the old sound new. To
bring up Springsteen one more time, it's as if Pete Yorn skipped 'Born to
Run' and went straight to 'Human Touch.' |