Pete Yorn ‎- musicforthemorningafter (10th Anniversary Edition) (2011)

As far as movie soundtracks go, you could do worse than the one for the Farrelly brothers’ Me, Myself, and Irene. Songs from late ’90s staples of FM rock, from Third Eye Blind to the Offspring and Foo Fighters, make the collection a true alternative rock turn-of-the-century time capsule. But buried at the end, between tracks by the likes of Marvelous 3 and Billy Goodrum, was the soundtrack’s best moment: “Strange Condition”, the first ever recording from Pete Yorn. A year later, the song would be one of many standouts on Yorn’s debut LP musicforthemorningafter. Showered with praise, the album would eventually reach Gold status and prove a modest success for Columbia Records.

Yorn’s recordings over the rest of the decade never reached the standard set by his debut. But this double-disc 10th Anniversary treatment of musicforthemorningafter shows that Yorn had as much potential as any of the popular singer-songwriters to grace the airwaves in 2001. It’s a reminder of what the original studio album plainly is: a collection of beautiful songs, nearly each one a small victory. With the help of some big-name producers, including Don Fleming (Teenage Fanclub, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.) and Brad Wood (Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair), Yorn recorded 14 guitar-driven tunes that drew on alternative rock, roots rock, and Britpop while retaining the scraggy intimacy of a Springsteen album. (Yorn is also a New Jersey native.)

The first disc is the entire original studio album, newly remastered with one addition: the hidden track, “A Girl Like You”, has been officially added as the last track. Most will remember musicforthemorningafter for its huge stock of melodies and incredible attention to detail. While the instrumentation varies nicely — there’s the propulsive drums and contrapuntal bass on opener “Life on a Chain”, the syncopated guitar melody and Wurlitzer piano on “June”, the crunchy guitars that buoy the refrain in “Sense” — there’s an undeniable coherence to the album, born mostly out of Yorn’s vocals, which convey deep emotions at every turn.

The second disc begins with Yorn’s entire live segment, on the morning the album was released in 2001, for Morning Becomes Eclectic, a radio show out of Santa Monica’s KCRW 89.9 FM. The man was a good salesman, and his performances are mostly faithful interpretations of some of the album’s best tracks. The stripped-down sound, though, gives Yorn more room to showcase his voice, which crackles with vulnerability on the coda to “Sense” and on the chorus to “On Your Side”. Yorn sounds tired, but that fits the album’s ethos. Music can sound this good when you’re half-awake and haven’t yet stepped out of your bedroom to begin your day.