#peter moren

This felt more derivative than I expected, at least at first blush. Maybe I need to know more of what he is singing about.

Peter Morén - Rytmen i blodet

9:30 INTERVIEW: Peter Morén of Peter Bjorn and John - Part Four

Even if you somehow never emerged from a sensory deprivation chamber, inside of a Y2K bunker, in the middle of Boise, Idaho – you STILL would have heard Peter Bjorn and John’s 2007 breakout hit, “Young Folks.” The song was everywhere - from movie and video game soundtracks to Air New Zealand safety videos - effectively catapulting the Stockholm-based trio into the world of indie stardom, and rightly so. Buried beneath that immensely catchy single lays an expansive discography of every influence imaginable. Seriously…Every. Influence. Imaginable. Just listen to the singles from each album and tell us we’re wrong.  

That got us thinking… What was the best way we could possibly dissect this vast array of influences? The answer: asking Peter Morén himself.

Here’s the last of a four-part series in which, album by album, Morén walks us through the Peter Bjorn and John discography. Be sure to read parts one, two, and three.

Quinn Koches [9:30 Club]: Finally, we arrive at number seven, this year’s Breakin’ Point. “What You Talking About?” is an awesome return to your intricate pop melodies. How did this single come about? What songs are you eager for people to hear?

Peter Morén [Peter Bjorn and John]: Staying true to our way of doing things, after the "back-to-basics" Gimme Some we decided to go full-on pop and full-on production. We struggled to find our way. We didn't know what kind of album we wanted to make, but we talked early on about disco. Apart from that we had no set rules and were fumbling in the dark for a while, but then decided we should focus on the songwriting; make well-written classics but hopefully current pop songs that would all be under four minutes and in medium tempo. Then the production had to take its cues from there; what would make each and every song shine the most would win, not what would fit an album-style. 

That meant we sat with guitars the three of us for ages, scrutinizing every detail, again and again, from lyric, to chord sequence and form. Eventually when we had the songs, we invited a wide arrange of hot shot-producers to work with us. That also took a heck of a long time. We have five almost-finished different versions of certain songs. We kept changing them 'til the last minute.

I love this album because I do feel the songs live up to the hype we set on them. There are a couple of songs here that I feel will enter that canon of PBJ songs I won't tire of, but it was a very tiresome and lengthy process. It took on our nerves 'til we almost did reach our “Breakin Point”... and we decided we will never go through a similar thing again.

"What You Talking About?" was the first song we started and one of the last ones we finished, so that went with us the whole journey. I'm not sure the version we ended up with is my favorite but that happens. We talked about "Billie Jean" - that vibe, a groovy bassline underneath it all. The lyric was inspired by an episode of Mad Men; the one where Peggy Olsen confronts Don Draper about how neglected she feels, taken for granted and not seriously. Eventually she quits, even though they somehow respect and like each other. The song is kind of based around the miscommunication between a boss and an ambitious employee. Other songs on the record also have a backdrop of everyday grind and fitting in (or not) in the social puzzle of capitalism. 

Funnily enough we wanted to be current on this record but still ended up bouncing back to the music we heard as small kids; early disco, ABBA, ELO, Bee Gees, Eurythmics, Fleetwood Mac, etc. But even more than that, I felt the need to kind of define for myself what pop was for me, to make it relevant in my head. Of course there’s plenty of great stuff on the radio now, but that doesn't mean I can do that kind of music. So I circled back to ‘60s stuff, even ‘50s as well; Buddy Holly, Everly Brothers, early poppy Beatles, Kinks, Beach Boys, girl groups, Motown… and I do think that gene circulates as strongly in the writing as the ‘70s and ‘80s stuff we all talked about - there definitely are tracks that shows our common roots in ‘80s indie and shoegaze. We also DID pay attention to what was on the charts. We listened to The Weeknd, Drake, Frank Ocean, etc. I'm not sure you can hear it - but we did. 

I love “Do-Si-Do.” It has purity to it. It tells a story, fuses folk and disco and is also the sequel to “Paris 2004,” which is a nice touch. “Hard Sleep” is fantastic and has really exploded into a noisier live version. Its chord structure is nice and has a certain touch of early Beatles. It’s about parenting and having kids... sentimental, but all true. “Breakin’ Point” is also a great song with a melancholic undercurrent. That’s one about expecting a child and thinking how that might fuck up or fix a life that’s already been through lots – mature themes that we now can man up. 

“A Long Goodbye” is another favorite. That went through many transitions, but finally found its feet when Paul Epworth steered the ship. It’s bombastic arena-indie, but still kind of intimate. A friend said it was like a mixture of Ride and ABBA. Sounds great! 

“Love Is What You Want” is also superb. Got some New Order and Caribou vibes but with a Pet Shop Boys meets Smiths-worthy pop song on top. “Nostalgic Intellect” is like our version of the themes of “Nowhere Man” and “Everyday Robots” with a Kinksy groove. Conor O’Brien from Villagers guests on vocals! And the coming down-vibes after all the high drama of the record with the acoustic-relaxed, but still groovy “Between The Lines,” is sublime. All the songs are killer really. I’m really proud of this record as you can tell. We nailed it finally!!! And once again I think the vocals are good.  

I think as pure songs this is our strongest collection.

There’s no dead meat!

Phew!!

-Quinn Koches

9:30 INTERVIEW: Peter Morén of Peter Bjorn and John - Part Three

Even if you somehow never emerged from a sensory deprivation chamber, inside of a Y2K bunker, in the middle of Boise, Idaho – you STILL would have heard Peter Bjorn and John’s 2007 breakout hit, “Young Folks.” The song was everywhere - from movie and video game soundtracks to Air New Zealand safety videos - effectively catapulting the Stockholm-based trio into the world of indie stardom, and rightly so. Buried beneath that immensely catchy single lays an expansive discography of every influence imaginable. Seriously…Every. Influence. Imaginable. Just listen to the singles from each album and tell us we’re wrong.

That got us thinking… What was the best way we could possibly dissect this vast array of influences? The answer: asking Peter Morén himself.

Here’s the third of a four-part series in which, album by album, Morén walks us through the Peter Bjorn and John discography. Don’t forget to read parts one and two.

Quinn Koches [9:30 Club]: Living Thing’s “Nothing To Worry About,” in my opinion, showed how versatile your pop sensibilities as a group were. How or why did you choose this single?

Peter Morén [Peter Bjorn and John]: Writer’s Block got a lot of accolades from the hip-hop world, which we were quite surprised and flattered by. It seemed like a watershed time when all kinds of music fused and everyone influenced everyone. It's still going of course! But the indie and hip-hop world mixing was new then. So we kind of bounced back on that I think for that album. John was already very into hip-hop anyway, and we also talked about African high-life and funk, soul and ‘80s synth-pop – a much wider palette of influences. Minimal was the key that had succeeded with "Young Folks," and here we took that to an extreme level. There weren't even drums on a lot of songs, just objects that we banged and popped and mixed up in the computer – all kinds of stuff: balloons, scissors, matchboxes, etc. It's a very mixed bag, that album.

In one way it was before its time – lots of people did similar things much later. As a whole it somehow becomes a bit overbearing. A lot of songs felt very heavy even though they didn't contain a lot of ingredients. We didn't get the tempos and arrangements right. Even though we aimed for pop in the writing, it sounds almost as experimental as Seaside Rock. Still in smaller portions, song-by-song, it works better.

"Nothing to Worry About" is very hip-hop I guess. It's a groovy little thing, but has never worked as good live, maybe because it's very much "made" in the studio. We've had trouble hitting that feel live, even though I liked the stripped down "blues" version we did sometimes. Also, it's a different melodic style from our other songs, less pop in that sense.

The kids’ choir was a straight nick from Jay-Z sampling Annie in "Hard Knock Life." The brightness of it goes through the speakers – but we used real kids!!!

My favorite part of the record is the last four songs. As a little suit of ballads, that would make a great standalone EP. "Stay This Way" is a really emotional song for me. I loved the Jazzy Jeff-version that they did on the hip-hop-remix-album that was curated by Mick Boogie, a thrilling project for us. It's got a great groove, the chords work well there and it's nice to see the lyrics taken into a completely different context. I would also love to do a full-blown soul-version of it at some point.

"Blue Period Picasso" is a weird storytelling song that I'm quite proud of… Wish I could do more in that style. Surprisingly, many people request that at shows or before shows online. It seems to have it's own little fan base and that makes me happy. Bjorn’s "4 Out of 5" is great, and John’s "Last Night" is the perfect closer with all that Phil Collins echo.

Next we move to Gimme Some, which was highlighted by the hard-rocking “Second Chance.” There’s definitely some garage-y bits in this album – what made you guys want to write an album like this at this point in your career?

When touring Living Thing we carried with us these two big keyboards that had sampled all kinds of sounds and keyboard things from the record. They were heavy! We quickly tired of it, and longed to just play more basically with our three core instruments; guitar, bass, drums, the power-trip thing. 

Also, through the years we have always got props for being such a rocking, energetic, live band and heard how our records really didn't reflect it... Of course it did to some extent on the first two albums, and that’s our roots, but we wanted to capture our “lively” live sound properly on an album all the way. We decided we were only allowed to use vocals, guitar, bass, drums and percussion, and even though we could overdub the tracks, we thought it should be based on live performances in the studio. All of the music we referenced during the recording was guitar music of different kinds. It became a really solid and coherent album and it was an exciting one to make. 

We decided to work with an outside producer for the first time; Per Sunding, an old idol of ours from the ‘90s band Eggstone, another great trio that were more rocking live than on record. So he understood our aim and was great at capturing just the RIGHT performance, arrangement, and tempo. Also, he was great with recording guitar sounds, which was exciting for me. The guitars sound super on that record and there are so many different kinds, from punky and skew to jingle-jangle-pop and everything in between - obviously enjoyed it! Also being a singer himself, he was great with coaching vocals. The singing is strong again here, after two albums of (in my opinion) less than great takes. 

I'm so happy we have "Second Chance" in our repertoire. A great beat, hook and vibe. It's our second most famous song and I thought about recently how I would not have a problem performing that at 65 or older. It would still be a blast probably. I have a hard time picturing myself singing "Young Folks" at that age to be honest. With songs, you fall in and out of love with them - especially performing them live. But "Second Chance" and "Objects Of My Affection," those two I really enjoy every single night.

There are many good songs on the record. "I Know You Don't Love Me" is the song we usually close our encores with as a vehicle for us to really stretch out and jam with that kraut beat underneath. "Dig a Little Deeper," which was based on "Tighten Up" by Archie Bell & the Drells, is another one that people LOVE live, an almost hit and actually released on a 7-inch. "Eyes" is great live too. That's the thing with that record, it DID really work live, so mission accomplished.

"May Seem Macabre" is another favorite. It's one of my "weird" lyrics, like "Blue Period Picasso"; this one picturing yourself lying dead beside your loved one and being buried, sort of a Romeo & Juliet-fantasy. The thing is I DID dream it. No less weird but I love that song. Also the sounds and the beat… It's got a madchester/indie-disco thing going.

I thought of Johnny Marr and John Squire sort of mixing up their styles on the same song...maybe a bit of The Edge too. "Lies" is really great as well. Very, very Buzzcocks.

-Quinn Koches

Jump to the final part of this series.

9:30 INTERVIEW: Peter Morén of Peter Bjorn and John - Part Two

Even if you somehow never emerged from a sensory deprivation chamber, inside of a Y2K bunker, in the middle of Boise, Idaho – you STILL would have heard Peter Bjorn and John’s 2007 breakout hit, “Young Folks.” The song was everywhere - from movie and video game soundtracks to Air New Zealand safety videos - effectively catapulting the Stockholm-based trio into the world of indie stardom, and rightly so. Buried beneath that immensely catchy single lays an expansive discography of every influence imaginable. Seriously…Every. Influence. Imaginable. Just listen to the singles from each album and tell us we’re wrong.  

That got us thinking… What was the best way we could possibly dissect this vast array of influences? The answer: asking Peter Morén himself.

Here’s the second of a four-part interview series in which, album-by-album, Morén walks us through the Peter Bjorn and John discography. Read the first installment here.  

Quinn Koches [9:30 Club]: Writer’s Block (one of my all-time favorites): “Young Folks” is how a lot of us first came to know PB&J. Recorded with the lovely Victoria Bergsman (formerly of The Concretes), what was the process behind writing that exceptionally catchy song? Did you expect the critical-buzz that followed?

Peter Morén [Peter Bjorn and John]: "Young Folks" started as a jazz piano-piece that Bjorn had, a bit Duke Ellington. When we started working on the album we came into talking about focusing more on drums... dry sounds, without cymbals: jazzy, soul, funk! So we mixed up this melody with John's attempt at James Brown. It's the first song we'd ever done without guitar, based on bass & drums – a fresh approach for indie-pop! We then decided it should be a duet and worked forever on the lyrics. Me and Bjorn didn't really know how to do a duet. We talked about movie scenes and dialogue; what people would feel/say when they meet someone. It felt natural to ask Victoria since we had the Concretes connection and her voice was perfect. I love that song but have been tired of it, on and off. I like it more now than eight years ago.

The other songs on that album are maybe more known than the deep cuts on our lesser-known albums. I will always keep "Objects Of My Affection" very close to heart. Live it's our big anthem that all kinds of people seem to react to emotionally, and still it's a very personal song for me. But the personal element is usually universal and it connects. I like that it's so simple, like a folk ballad. Live it becomes this loud indie-rock noise-fest, but it would probably work as well in an Irish pub with a bunch of sailors on just one guitar.

I also love "The Chills." It's one of those we did all together, something we did much less then, and much more now. It's got nice words and that fantastic beat that we nicked off a Dionne Warwick record. Impossible to pull off live, though. We named it after the New Zealand band, The Chills. We wanted a bit of their feel but the lyrics are not about them per se.

"Start To Melt" is a very nice one from John – like a haiku-poem. Great shoegaze-vibe. The songwriting is solid on that album in general. All the songs are good. "Roll the Credits" and "Paris 2004" are two other ones I adore.  I'm not super fond of all the sounds and especially not my vocals, which were stronger on Falling Out. I think I perform the songs way better now, but the drums are fantastic, and drums are important. I get that people like it.

Seaside Rock didn’t have any singles, but its instrumental and experimental nature presented a nice contrast to the pop-classic Writer’s Block. What was it like writing this album during this time in your career?

It was probably the stupidest career move ever, after finally getting your big break, to follow it up with a strange instrumental album with us playing instruments we can't play, and with Swedish dialogue in local dialects that not even people from Stockholm can understand. But it’s just something we needed to do at that time after all that touring for Writers Block; take some pressure off, just have fun with music...and it shows. I adore that record.

For pure listening pleasure, maybe because it's so different to everything else we have done, it's the one I keep returning to. It's nice to not listen to your voice as well. It’s very, very unique. I can't think of anything like it. 

"Favour Of The Season" is nice. I play the violin there (and on other songs). It was the first instrument I learned as a kid before picking up guitar, but I never got any good, and now I'm terrible. We wanted to have the feel of kids playing music and that’s one way to achieve that. Bjorn and John play trumpet and saxophone on some songs. We also decided we were gonna do one song each with dialogue from our home villages. In Sweden, almost every little village has their own language. I did an acoustic guitar piece called "Erik’s Fishing Trip." Erik is my maternal grandfather, now 99. He tells a story about an old fishing trip that ends drastically. Love to listen to that. Nice to have when he one day is gone. We are quite close.

"Needles and Pills" is great. Again, with some of those songs long afterwards you think, "What did this come from?" You kind of can't think back on how you came to create something like that, but we did! Love that cacophonic noise ending where we actually play the melody from "Needles & Pins," hence the pun in the title. "At the Seaside" is sweet, like a fresh summer morning at the sea. Love John’s piano and my harmonica and that acoustic 12-string (that just happened to be in the studio). The giggling in the middle is from the Japanese band The Suzan that Bjorn was producing then. Good memories.

-Quinn Koches

Jump to part three.

‪#‎PBJ7‬ ‪#‎BehindTheScenes‬ throwback with Peter Morén & Paul Epworth