There May Be Some Discomfort

ArrangingTime, the latest Pete Yorn release, leaves little to be wished for in terms of an album.  It is extremely mellow and, while instrumentation is not as thick as it could be, it lends the album itself a relaxing, mentally stimulating air that may not have been given if heavier.  Yorn’s voice is an excellent penetrating croon that never once gets melancholy or dark even with sad lyrics. Compositionally perfect and beautiful poetic lyrics, each song its own nostalgia with “Summer Was a Day” bringing to mind beach side romances while “I’m Not The One” imagines a well ended relationship and self-assessment.

A downside to this is you find yourself longing to hear other songs at times. “She Was Weird” brings to mind The Smiths’ heavy hitter “How Soon Is Now?” in terms of composition. With the song “Roses,” at the start of the song, the chord progression sounded like Green Day’s “Time of Your Life (Good Riddance).” While lyrics are brilliant and thought provoking, one cannot shake the desire to superimpose songs this way, leaving a very off feeling. It’s a little jarring and distracting from the album overall.

Despite these discrepancies, the album itself is perfect. A listener could not really ask for more from an easy listening rock album. Most of these aforementioned correlations could be just one listener’s personal repertoire bleeding through into what they are listening to at the time. As a fact, ArrangingTime does not really follow “rock” genre rules, more lending itself more to a classical music feel. It is nigh art and highly respectable. While some may say Yorn’s music has not developed any further within the past six years, this album at least could be considered a great fall back for the times when one needs something pleasant and relaxing, but still with some emotion, to listen to.