Stream
After more than twenty years as a professional musician, Peter Morén is still searching for identity. It was a realisation that he came to in 2020, when his band, beloved indie rock trio Peter Bjorn and John, released their ninth album almost exactly as the pandemic was beginning. With all touring and promotion cancelled, Morén found himself confronted more intensely than ever with the question of who he really was as a songwriter. “I look at peers of mine that I’ve worked with, like James Yorkston or Robert Forster,” he says, “and those guys are auteurs, with a clear identity. They know exactly what they want to do. But, myself, I felt a little bit lost.”.
With Peter Bjorn and John forced onto the back burner, Morén set about finding his way back to his musical home. He returned to the guitar as his primary songwriting tool, approaching the instrument from new angles. He revisited old ideas for songs that had never quite come to fruition, and penned entirely new ones, too. Out of this, SunYears was born, announcing its arrival with the highly collaborative debut record Come Fetch My Soul! in 2023. Sonically, Morén deftly blended elements of guitar pop, indie rock, folk and psych, whilst calling in favours from famous friends to duet with the likes of Ron Sexsmith, Jess Williamson and Eric D. Johnson.
Now, SunYears evolves again with the arrival of a beautifully crafted second record, The Song Forlorn. Whilst the album retains the infectious melodies of its predecessor – the project’s name, after all, is a partial nod to the legendary Sun Records – it sees Morén dig even deeper to serve up ten tracks that run the gamut of genres; he credits The Beatles’ Revolver and The White Album as formative influences that refused to stick to one style. He goes from folk rock (‘Dark Eyes’) and breezy jangle pop (‘Spanner in the Works’) to melancholic piano balladry (‘If You Were to Ask’) and groove-driven garage rock (‘The Body’). There’s even a free-wheeling, country-tinged instrumental in ‘Swamp Mob’, which sees his influences meeting at the junction of The Meters and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Some of these songs, Morén contends, recall Peter Bjorn and John at their more lo-fi. In the main, however, he casts his stylistic net much wider on The Song Forlorn. “That’s not the phase I’m in right now,” he explains. “I want to make albums that feel true and honest to my full range.”
That spectrum runs not just across multiple genres but also a broad range of themes, as he explores a more personal side of his songwriting. This is an album that reckons with the realities of approaching middle age; ‘Dark Eyes’ was inspired by a friend in the throes of depression, ‘Your Dad Was Sad’ deals with the aftermath of the sudden death of Morén’s father-in-law, and ‘The Body’s boisterous sound belies its lyrical content, which reflects on the commonplace nature of health scares as we get older. Again, the album features a slew of different voices, figuratively and literally; Madison Cunningham, De Clair. and Nicole Atkins all contribute vocals, whilst Lisa Hannigan and Sam Genders of Tunng sing on ‘Last Night on the Mountain’, on which the latter takes a co-writing credit. Yorkston, meanwhile, contributed poignant lyrics to ‘If You Were to Ask’.
“There are songs about memories, and what made you who you are,” he reflects. “There are songs to loved ones and people that you will never forget. Existential ruminations and crises, metaphorically and directly. Songs about different kinds of addictions, for better and worse. Songs about how the physical and psychological works in tandem. Hope. Despair. Life. Death. All that lot.”
And yet, if there is one key theme running through The Song Forlorn, it is love, and especially the love of music. The title track, which closes the album, relates to the idea of leaving songs unfinished, something that had haunted Morén as he searched for an identity outside of Peter Bjorn and John. The track is inspired by the beauty of the natural world, but also by the constant search for meaning, one that Morén feels he offers up a solution to in the final verse. SunYears has reinvigorated him as a songwriter, and The Song Forlorn confirms him as one of Sweden’s most enduring talents.
“Songwriting can feel like an addiction,” he reflects. “There’s a constant pressure from new songs that wants your attention, that want to be finished, that want to be as good as they can be. They follow you through night and day. There’s melodies that won’t let go, and lyrical puzzles that you have to solve. Sometimes you want to leave it be, because what’s the point really? You can often feel like giving up as a creative, but how can you, really? It’s just who you are. You can’t stop. It keeps you alive, and it makes you move forward. And it’s generally a good force – a good addiction if you will. That’s why I made another album – I couldn’t forsake any of these songs.”
Selected discography
Videos
