“I look at peers of mine I’ve worked with, like James Yorkston or Robert Forster, and those guys are auteurs, with a clear identity. They know exactly what they want to do. But, myself, I felt a little bit lost.”
Peter Morén recounts the musical crossroads he reached after Peter Bjorn and John placed themselves onto the backburner after nine albums and twenty years. His response to these doubts was to return to the guitar as his primary songwriting tool and to release music under the name of SunYears. ‘The Forlorn Song’ is his second full-length collection of songs following on from 2023’s ‘Come Fetch My Soul’. Whilst the new release is a mighty fine collection of songs, whether it will enable him to be seen as an auteur is questionable as it takes Beatles albums like ‘Revolver’ as a formative influence in that it shoots between genres, steadfastly refusing to stick to one style. It also sees him collaborating with a variety of vocalists including Lisa Hannigan and Sam Genders of Tuung, Nicole Atkins, Madison Cunningham and de clair which adds to its eclectic feel. However, being considered an auteur is not necessarily the highest accolade. After all, while that early influence Paul McCartney is unquestionably a songwriter beyond compare with a career to envy, perhaps due to his versatility he would not immediately be associated with the word auteur. Often, it is primarily associated in music with cult artists which is peculiar when considering that the word was first linked with highly successful film directors like Alfred Hitchcock.
‘The Forlorn Song’ starts with a brief instrumental, ‘Where Are We?’ which with its backwards masking is unrepresentative of what is to follow except in leading the listener to expect the unexpected. In contrast, ‘Dark Eyes’ is a piece of classic guitar pop with echoes of Roddy Frame to its melody and vocal delivery inspired by observing a friend in the throes of depression. Hannigan and Genders lend their voices to ‘Last Night on the Mountain’, a song of some turmoil with stirring violin adding to its country folk feel, although ending with the reassuring sentiments, “I’m happy to be with you always / I’m happy to be where I feel safe.”
Dealing with the death of Morén’s father-in-law and its aftermath, ‘Your Dad Was Sad’ understandably has a mournful air albeit matched with a determination to find strength in grief. In its delivery, it is comparable to the songwriting of Ron Sexsmith, a guest on ‘Come Fetch My Soul’. The stomping ‘(Going To A) Cruel Country’ deals with bullying, especially in childhood, and finding solace in song (“If you can deal in song then everything can fly / Sing when the winter darkens the woods / Feel less afraid, you sang it quite good.”) De Clair duets with Morén on the piano ballad, ‘If You Were To Ask’ with lyrics from James Yorkston which makes the chorus lyrics (“if someone else sings this / I can get away with writing it”) even more fitting.
Morén recently appeared as part of Robert Forster’s Swedish band on his latest album, ‘Strawberries’, and there are elements of his lyricism on the breezy pop of ‘Spanner In The Works’ (“to fan a flame”) and the backing vocals which would happily sit on late 80s Go-Betweens material. Atkins joins Morén for ‘The Body’, the most up-tempo and rocking number on the album which belies its subject matter of the aches and pains of ageing together with its impact on the emotions (“makes your heart grow numb”), although ultimately it is a song of restoration.
The instrumental ‘Swamp Mob’ makes for a lively country rock-tinged instrumental before ‘The Forlorn Song’ ends with its title track. It features Cunningham, recently heard to excellent effect on ‘Cunningham Bird’, a long player on which she and Andrew Bird covered Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks’s ‘Buckingham Nicks’ in its entirety. Cunningham’s voice blends ideally with Morén’s on a slow, aching track that recognises songwriting as an addiction, albeit a positive one, with songs clamouring for attention and the need to be completed, acting as a force to keep him alive (“a song never leaves you lone… it’s the saint inside.”)
It makes a fitting end to the album, adding to his reputation as a master songwriter. The album is a grown-up record in the best possible sense, happy to display Morén’s full musical and emotional range. While that means his authorial voice is varied rather than one that re-examines the same sounds and themes in minute detail, it is nonetheless highly enjoyable.
SunYears: The Song Forlorn – Out 21 August 2025 (Villa)
– Spanner In The Works – (Official Music Video)
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
