Peter Moren Ditches His Bandmates And Instruments For Solo Debut

Peter Moren isn't used to going solo, but he thought it was about time he did. One-third of Swedish indie rockers Peter Bjorn And John, vocalist/guitarist Moren has been playing music with bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Bjorn Yttling since he was 15. While Moren used to be the main songwriter in the band, all three members (rounded out by drummer John Eriksson) started penning their own tunes for their third album, 2006's Writer's Block, making it hard for all of Moren's songs to fit within the band's scope.

It began a while back, when Moren realized some songs he'd written didn't fit the Peter Bjorn And John sound. "We started to rehearse one of them with the band, called 'Le Petit Coeur,' and they just wanted to take it in a completely different direction than I heard in my head," he says. "And for once, I wasn’t ready to compromise. So I put that song aside and I started to think about some older songs that would fit with it, and then I wrote some new songs. And by that time, I kind of had a clear idea that I wanted to make a very intimate and a very homey, a bit more acoustic, like folkier kind of album. It felt like a good time to branch out and have another outlet for all of those songs that I write."

Unlike PB And J's layered indie pop, Moren's, The Last Tycoon solo debut is a folk album that's pretty bare in terms of instrumentation. The album centres on Moren and his guitar, although strings, synths, percussion and vibraphones make their way into the mix. "At first, I had this idea of making, like, a Bert Jansch record, just vocals and guitar," says Moren. "We started to record that way, then we put on a lot of stuff, because it's hard to keep your hands off of all those fun instruments you have laying about."

Moren says he was attracted to a direct, lo-fi approach, where it sounds like he's playing in your living room. "It's kind of nice to do something that's not that produced and poppy. I just wanted to do something different. And it's scary, but at the same time it feels good because it feels close to yourself, so it feels very honest."

The album title comes from Elia Kazan's 1976 film The Last Tycoon, which is an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's posthumous unfinished novel, The Love Of The Last Tycoon. The plot deals with the main character's attachment to his work, which leaves no room in his life for love.

When Moren tries to describe the relation of the film title to his album, he's worried about sounding pretentious. "It's a very pompous title, The Last Tycoon, and that together with this music that's very low-key and personal, it's kind of almost like an ironic, funny combination," he says. "Also, the cover has me sleeping — my girlfriend painted the cover — and it's kind of caught off-guard and not posing at all. But together with this title, it's kind of funny."

The movie is also about how the main character is caught between the end of the silent film era and the beginning of talkies. "I find something interesting about the end of an era, 'cause we've been in the end of an era for quite some time now," says Moren. "When I do music, I think about albums and I think about the whole thing, but then people end up taking a couple of songs on MP3s... I guess I feel old-fashioned sometimes. The last tycoon of the album."

PB And J recently finished 18 months of on-and-off touring to support Writer's Block. They've completed their next album and are already working on its follow-up. Amidst all this, Moren has headed back out on the road for a solo tour. "Part of the reason I had the chance to make this album was because I had a lot of free time," he says. "Before the band broke big and started touring and actually making some money, I had to work all the time or go to university and do other stuff. So being able to do music as a living has enabled me to do more music."