Music Review: Peter Bjorn & John - Living Thing
5.5 / 10. A Bold Step Forward Doesn't Pay Off
As we near the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, we have seen many indie and alternative bands break though the MySpace clutter with a much buzzed about song, choice spot in a movie or TV soundtrack or high praise from the extensive online indie following.
The challenge in this decade has not only been breaking through to a larger audience to find some success but to maintain that success from album to album without being written off as a one hit or one album wonder.
Follow up: Success or flop?
Perhaps the most difficult thing for bands to accomplish these days is follow up a hit album or song with something that isn’t written off as wanna-be mainstream trash (like the Killers “Sam’s Town” Franz Ferdinand’s “You Could Have It So Much Better,” Death Cab For Cutie’s “Plans”).
Or worse, recycled, inferior versions of past successes (Interpol’s “Our Love To Admire,” Coldplay’s “X&Y,” arguably The Strokes’ “Room On Fire”) or just plain bad (Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah’s “Some Loud Thunder,” Bloc Party’s “Weekend In The City,” Kaiser Chiefs’ "Yours Truly Angry Mob”).
But now, with bands like Peter Bjorn and John and Silversun Pickups releasing new albums, we’re reaching a new wave of follow-ups; bands that came along after things like YouTube, Guitar Hero, and most importantly, torrent sites, became a part of the lives of music fans everywhere.
Out of the Blogs
Peter Bjorn and John is a Swedish indie pop band born out of the blogosphere and MP3 filesharing culture that launched the band’s ultracatchy whistle-pop breakthrough “Young Folks,” in late 2006, early 2007. “Young Folks” was one of many highlights on the band’s excellent 2006 album, “Writer’s Block.”
But that was the middle of the decade and this is the end of the decade and much has changed in the music world as well as the world at large in the past three years.
So how has this changed the sound of these laid back Swedes and their catchy pop hooks?
A Bold Choice
The major difference between “Writer’s Block” and latest release “Living Thing” is that the band has added a variety of beats to the equation. The drum machines and beat arrangements point to a band willing to change in the face of a changing world.
However, they messed with their brand of laid back optimism that ran wild through “Writer’s Block” just enough to make “Living Thing” open to be a victim of the dreaded follow-up disease that has plagued so many before them. It’s a bold step in a new direction, which is admirable, but it’s simply much less fun.
That’s not to say that the album is without a few gems. First single “Nothing To Worry About” is a bass-heavy, stomping pop song with a fantastic head-bobbing shout-along chorus. It is without a doubt the album’s best track. The band always seems to be better when they tap into the more pop-driven catchiness that they thrive on.
The problem with this album, and it seems to be a continued trend from many European bands, is that since meeting some success, they seem to accrue some ill-conceived level of self-importance that seeps into the songwriting of the next album and subsequently makes it worse.
Many of the songs on “Living Thing” would be much better if they were taken less seriously. Instead of opting to run with the pop hooks they create, the band gets caught up in overblown, stadium-sized vocals, over-complicated beat arrangements and way too many dark, ominous, adventurous tracks that just don’t work.
So check out “Nothing To Worry About” and rest assured that the rest of the album is pretty much nothing to worry about. So to speak.
Living Thing
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