Album Details

• Artist: Pete Yorn
• Album: Back And Fourth
• Label: Sony
• Year of Release: 2009
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: toddlevinsonfrank on 2009-09-02

Like most other people, I really loved Pete Yorn's first album, musicforthemorningafter. Great songs, cool voice, a winning mix. Of course, I hate to go the "nothing was ever as good as the first album" route, because the musical landscape is littered with artists whose first album was their best. No shame in that.

I checked out his second album, Day I Forgot, and it quickly became the album I forgot. I never bothered with his third.

But for some reason Pete Yorn remains a bit of a tease, because his voice really is that cool. So you (or I, in this case) hold out hope that the next record will be better than the often-mediocre releases that followed his debut. Sadly his new effort Back & Fourth, while cleverly titled, is not that great. It's not horrible or anything. It's his, and really that matters more than what I proclaim on the internet.

While the textured and warm production from Mike Mogis makes Back & Fourth sound quite good (just as he's done for Conor Oberst/Bright Eyes in the past), none of the songs are really striking or memorable. And even though Yorn is usually credited with good lyrics that are too-often presented in all-too-similar singer/songwriter arrangements and sounds, this time there's places where the lyrics fail the crisp sound of the music. He starts one song with the trite "Baby gimme a sign, a message comin through." I'm far from a prude, but in one song he actually gives us this detail: "Your kiss was the best, you had enormous breasts." Really Pete? And elsewhere he breaks out this gem: "I Googled you in quotes, got no results."

Oh well, at least he's still got a really cool-sounding voice.

User Reviews and Comments

on 2009-09-14 dscanland Said:

Very cool Review Todd, I couldn't agree more, cept I enjoyed Nightcrawler, his previous album to this one. Check it out.

"Your kiss was the best, you had enormous breasts." lol That's awesome!
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