Pete Yorn: New Album
By Team JamBase Mar 12, 2009 • 3:44 pm PDT

SET FOR JUNE 23 RELEASE ON COLUMBIA RECORDS
MIKE MOGIS (BRIGHT EYES, RILO KILEY) PRODUCES WITH ADDITIONAL CREATIVE CONSULTING FROM RICK RUBIN
![]() |
The songs on Back and Fourth range from lilting mandolin lullabies to bracing anthems. But there’s a thread running through the album – an organic feel to the arrangements, a careful pacing to the sequence, a penetrating truth to the stories – that’s unmatched by anything else in Yorn’s catalogue.
Back and Fourth sounds like no other Pete Yorn record because it was made like no other Pete Yorn record. For the first time, Yorn wrote lyrics before composing melodies, resulting in his most personal songs to date. When it came time to record, Yorn traded the family, friends and routines of his life in Los Angeles for the relative solitude of Omaha, where he spent two months in 2008 making the album. And while Yorn played virtually all the instruments on his first three albums, he assembled a top shelf band for Back and Fourth, including drummer Joey Waronker (Beck), pianist/arranger Nate Wolcott (Bright Eyes, The Faint, Rilo Kiley), guitarist Jonny Polonsky, bassist Joe Karnes (John Cale), and backing vocalist Orenda Fink (Azure Ray). “That’s the essential approach to the new album,” says Yorn. “I wanted to share my songs with a group of players who I respected, and then share the experience of recording them together as a group.”
Pete Yorn will tour extensively in support of Back and Fourth and also plans to release more new music in 2009. Stay tuned for updates.
PETE YORN BACK AND FOURTH TRACK LISTING:
1. Don’t Wanna Cry
2. Paradise Cove
3. Close
4. Social Development
5. Shotgun
6. Last Summer
7. Thinking of You
8. Country
9. Four Years
10. Long Time