Pete Yorn’s Hard Way Is My End Of Summer Soundtrack
Review of Pete Yorn's new album, The Hard Way
I shouldn’t be surprised. Pete Yorn’s albums have often played like a mixtape diary, or life soundtrack in my life, often hitting me just when I needed every single song. It started with musicforthemorningafter, given to me by my late husband during the hardest year in our shared life.
“You’ll love this,” he said, handing me the CD. I more than loved it. The album became one of my forever, desert islands, listen to this and you’ll get me kinds. There are so many memories attached to every song. I even wrote a short story with the album as the protagonist – a love story of an album that falls in love with a human girl.
The Hard Way just came out as I am dealing with so many hard things. This year has been filled with them – hard way things. It happens when you are growing, evolving, digging in deep, and feeling everything.
Is Pete having one of those “hard way” years, or is it my perspective? Is it how I’m interpreting the songs? Devouring them, embracing them, singing them in the car as loud as I can, crying, but feeling better somehow. Understood. Less alone.
The Hard Way is made up of eight songs. A melodic novella, a collection of melancholic reveries, of hopes, separating, longing, and letting go. The album’s cover fits perfectly with the music going on inside the sleeve. The desert is in the songs. The openness waiting to be explored, in ourselves, and out in the world.
The album was recorded at Henson Studio with Josh Gudwin.
Let’s have a listen.
Photo by Beth Yorn
I’m a sucker for first tracks, and title tracks. “The Hard Way” is both. This is the song that grabbed at me immediately — listen, repeat, feel. This year has been hard, the last two months, especially. Beyond that, the long-term relationship I was in had gotten into a cycle of hard ways. Patterns that became hard to break. Patterns, that on my side, stem from past trauma and all its extra bonus add-ons.
I am at the place in my life where I need to step aside, spend time by myself, dig in deeper than I’ve dared to dig, and heal. This is the hard stuff, but without doing it those “hard way” reruns will continue.
This song is vulnerable, melodic, honest, and hopeful. It is everything I need right now. It is the most recognizable Pete track on the album. It has that thing that artists have that is authentically theirs.
I had the privilege of hearing Pete perform “Real Good Love” at Largo a few months back. It immediately struck me as one of those quintessential songs that is immediately sing-a-long-able. This is one of those love songs that will make it on playlists you make when you are first falling in love, or have been in love for a long while.
It has a cinematic quality about it, too. Close your eyes and picture an indie romance, lovers in a car driving across the desert, the driver reaches over and takes the other lover’s hand. e watch and believe in the lovers forever.
Growing apart or falling apart. The ache persists. It echoes in wish you were still here sentiments and tears shed across from each other at a favorite restaurant. Sometimes goodbyes are see you later, sometimes I’ll always remember. It’s hard to know until you know.
There is so much melancholic hopefulness here. I keep listening to this one on repeat. The song persists.
Love across the miles. This is an on-the-road, on-tour I miss you song. A long-distance love song. Think Journey’s “Faithfully”, Carole King’s “So Far Away”, and John Denver’s “Leaving On a Jet Plane”.
“So I keep you in my heart,
when you’re not here in my arms.
When it all falls apart,
you’ll just play my favorite song,
and all the things that we’ve done wrong all the things that we’ve done wrong
Go away.”
A crowd sings along with lit-up phones (I miss the lighters) kind of song played live. This could be the sentiment that keeps love alive, or that brings ugly tears in the middle of the night because it’s been just too long. Perfect.
I wrote a short story that this song reminds me of. A story about feeling wanted, the spark of attraction, of possibility, that should stay in fantasy, unrequited. But the feeling of it, the want, persists.
The rings. That’s where the longing resides, on each finger, on the impossible possibility. Will it, won’t it? Who’s waiting for who? Will they meet up at the place they first noticed each other, saying “I can’t stay long”, but missing that plane anyway?
This track reminds me of Yorn’s “Roses” from ArrangingTime, the Linklater film Before Sunset, and that short story I may need to dig up, clean up, and maybe find it a home.
This one, and “Real Good Love”, have catchy, must-have single vibes. This one is going to be the first released single – and for good reason. It’s cross-over in its appeal (could be indie, could be alt-country, could be pop), and destined to be on so many curated playlists. The “someday I’ll, someday I’ll” part of the song, with the snapping sounds has that quality that makes for hit songs.
This one has a story in it, vivid, relatable, yet pliable – meaning that each listener can attach their own meaning, their own love, their own heartbreak, their own regret to it. An earworm that gets stuck in your head, looping until you find it and press play.
Watch the video to “Someday, Someday” here.
The perfect goodbye.
Anyone who has lost a loved one, a dear one, feels this. There’s letting go and there’s grief, and so much love in it. It’s all in this song. From the first listen, to it playing now as I write this, I find myself with emotional prickly chills as tears collect in my eyes.
It really is the perfect song of goodbye.
“I’ll Keep Going On” is perfect to end this album with.
This track is hopeful, with a bit more clarity. Still wandering and searching, but open to answers, and for someone who might make it feel better. Or, if not, will go on the journey with you. It makes me want to go on a road trip out to someplace like Joshua Tree, windows rolled down, my left arm making wind waves as this album plays on.
Pete Yorn, recording with Josh Gudwin at Henson Studio
Photo by Beth Yorn
Pete’s on tour in the US, kicking off September 20 as one of the headliners at XPonential Fest.