Pete Yorn - Nightcrawler

Spurred by my relentless need to have a meticulously organized music collection, I came across Nightcrawler during another monotonous archive and importing session into iTunes recently. As with other albums in my collection, I purchased this with the all too good intention of becoming a further devotee to well written music (based upon artist namesake alone in this case). I think I listened to it briefly before shelving it for other albums I had recently purchased at the time.

Aptly called Nightcrawler, Pete Yorn’s third studio album seems to be fishing for a concurrent theme that most listeners wouldn’t pick up on. In interviews prior to the widespread release of the album Mr. Yorn let it slip that he saw his first three albums as a trilogy of sorts but not in the sense of Star Wars or the Godfather series. Musicforthemorningafter, Day I Forgot, and Nightcrawler were a concept that Yorn had as the 24-hour elapse of a day. With five years of time between the release of his debut album and Nighcrawler’s release, I don’t think he has rushed the pace of this trilogy or sacrificed any quality of the crafting for his music. Other artists could likewise follow in his steps of keeping quality high while completing ambitious projects, Sufjan I’m looking at you on this one. (I’ll give credit 50 is a big number for a project.)

AMC’s pick off of Nightcrawler includes “For Us”, “Maybe I’m Right”, and “Splendid Isloation" rightly so given the ability for those songs to be used in mix mediums. I can’t disagree either because if I wanted to sell music from this album, those three songs are the ones that I’d choose also. They fit perfectly for commercial spots, television shows, and filler for movies. This isn’t to say that the songwriting suffers or the composition lacks substance to his music a pop hit, it might be more the contrary. Mr. Yorn’s music has been in the adult contemporary for so long due in part to the fact that it has substance. Unfortunately, in Pop circles the majority of what sells is catchy, repetitive, and has something of a 5^th Grade comprehension level, The Beatles had this formula down perfectly.

Yorn has the uncanny ability to sequence an album so that its songs are able to flow. [Insert quote from Nick Hornby’s, “High Fidelity” here] Nightcrawler reminds me so much of Steve Miller’s Fly Like An Eagle in how enjoyable of an album it is to listen to from start to finish. The first few times that I listened completely through Nightcrawler, I didn’t realize that I had made it through the album until the 3^rd or 4^th listening of “Vampyre.” There are a variety of styles to the songs included on this album; “Undercover”, “Policies”, and “Alive” with their slightly reminiscent overly produced late 90’s carry over. “The Man” (with backing vocals by Natalie Maines) comes off as an obvious soothing country sound. Nightcrawler comes together as a very solid album.

I anticipate listening to his newest solo release Back and Forth and also Break Up (later this year) with actress/“singer” Scarlett Johansson.