Writer's Block — Peter Bjorn & John
Wichita
2006
Rating:


There's something almost lovably naοve about Peter Morιn, Bjorn Yttling and John Erikkson's "Writer's Block." Peter Bjorn & John write simple pop songs, the kind, as the saying goes, they don't make anymore. PB&J capture the spirit of early Beatles and other pop groups of the early 1960s, a time when it was okay to sing about wanting to hold someone's hand without being ironic about it.

With "Young Folks," the Stockholm-based trio has written a song that harkens back to those days, with Peter attempting to get to know a girl (Victoria Bergsman of The Concretes) and the two of them expressing disdain for "young folks, / Talking 'bout the young style." Peter and Bergsman sing about a "Before Sunrise" kind of love. The couple, rather than lusting after each other, revels in talking: "Hours seem to disappear / Everyone is leaving I'm still with you." The innocence of their courtship is heightened by Bjorn whistling the melody in the background and John manically playing the bongos and the shaker. Peter seemingly continues the couple's story with "Paris 2004," detailing the half-eaten croissants left behind on a Sunday morning and the way she draws a ring around his finger while he's sleeping. The way he sings "I'm all about you, you're all about me, / We're all about each other" is goofy, but goofy in the way new love makes you.

For John, love is enough to make him "Start to Melt" with shoegazing guitars. Bjorn's love is more cinematic on "Roll the Credits." With Peter on tremolo guitar and John on dulcimer, Bjorn rejoices, "It's between me and her now, / Can't separate at all." The specificity of one of his girlfriend's idiosyncrasies fills the heart: "She's stepping on my shoes, / And I couldn't want it more, / That way I always know she's close."

"Objects of My Affection" opens the album, but it feels as much like a summation as an opening salvo. The song charges along in six-eight time with walls of guitars, snare and whistling filling the soundscape. Peter is preparing to give someone a "try," but he's also contemplating who he was when he first moved to a new city, before he met her. "And the question is, 'Was I more alive / Then than I am now?' / I happily have to disagree; / I laugh more often now, I cry more often now, / I am more me." There have been few truer statements about what it truly means to be in love.

Posted Friday, December 22, 2006

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/music/peter.bjorn.john/writers.block