Pete Yorn

Singer-songwriter Pete Yorn is too attuned to the lure of melody to pass for just another
gloomy young strummer, and he's too smart to look on the perky side of love.
Musicforthemorningafter is, like its title, atmospheric, gently lit by sunlight and regret.
Yorn's tunes are driven by the hangover strum of acoustic guitar, but he's one impish
mopehead; weird but weirdly right stuff abounds, like the unidentified fuzzy scr... More >

The younger brother of a bigtimeentertainment lawyer and the hottest agent in Hollywood is as neotraditionalist as Gillian Welch, only his chosen tradition is the El Lay sound perfected by Peter Asher and Chuck Plotkin: kempt guitar hooks atop solid drum parts he lays down himself, with some Mitchell Froom-style studio murk for hipness and atmosphere. If you love rock and roll it'll make your skin crawl on contact. If you have a weakness for tune it'll grow on you. Only then, if you have any brains left, you'll wonder why you haven't connected with a single phrase and find more El Lay on the lyric sheet--a fusion of old-style singer-songwriter indirection and new-style song-doctor ur-banality. Honors the diction and cadences of ordinary speech, 'tis said--until there are scansion problems, when up pop anti-idioms like "the look upon your face" and "you were never fond of anything I said." You said it, buster. (Grade: B-)