PB&J Strive to Recapture Greatness of “Young Folks”

Ironically, the Swedish indie rock trio Peter Bjorn and John titled their most successful album “Writer’s Block.” Perhaps they should have reserved that title for this album. Still riding on the success of their mega hit “Young Folks,” the band has released a new album, “Gimme Some,” which essentially spends forty minutes attempting to recapture the joyous essence of that 2006 hit. By trying too hard to channel the simplistic brilliance of “Young Folks” the trio creates a collection of songs, which when taken individually are successful and catchy, but when taken as a whole create a monotonous, repetitive, and wholly average experience.

The album shows potential in the early stretch with three relatively interesting and catchy songs: “Tomorrow Has To Wait,” “Dig A Little Deeper,” and “Second Chance.” However, the qualities that make these first three songs succeed—driving and syncopated drumbeats, ascending guitar riffs, and mimicking background vocals—begin to reappear in every song afterwards, and the distinctiveness of each one diminishes. In fact, the band appears to be so adamantly avoiding variety that the first eight songs are all nearly identical in tempo, instrumentation, and drumbeat. The slow, laid-back yet self-accusatory ninth-track, “Down Like Me,” offers a glimmer of hope that variety may finally appear, but the reemergence of the album’s derivative style in the last two songs quickly dismisses this.

An uneasy sense of creative laziness pervades the album as a result of this dearth of diversity. “Gimme Some,” on the whole, lacks the strokes of original genius like the whistled riff of “Young Folks.” Although similarly novel ideas appear throughout the album in the form of sequences like the distorted guitar solo that closes out the frenetic “Eyes,” and the soft airy string arrangement that opens “May Seem Macabre,” such moments are too infrequent to redeem the album’s general banality.

While the album as a whole is bland, the songs, when taken isolation, are well-crafted and exciting. These songs exemplify the gift the trio has for writing melodies that effortlessly and beautifully soar. Such melodic talent is most evident on the album’s standout tracks, “Tomorrow Has To Wait” and “I Know You Don’t Love me.” However, the band does not seem to be stretching themselves to apply their talents in ways that will enhance their music’s artistic merit. On “Second Chance” the band chants that you “Can’t can’t count on a second chance,” yet hypocritically all they seem to be doing by fleeing the experimentation of their previous, critically panned album, “Living Thing,” and returning to their old style is hoping for one.

“Gimme Some” shows what the trio can create when they are merely falling back on their strengths—a pop-rock sound rife with basic, catchy chord progressions, and beautifully constructed melodies—and exploring nothing new. The trio’s previous album, “Living Thing,” was considered too experimental and dissonant, and critics urged the band to focus on doing what they do best—writing catchy and hook filled pop rock tunes. But these critics were suggesting that the band confine their talents to a superficial level. In “Gimme Some” the trio could have combined their past experimental attempts with their vast melodic talents to create a truly great album.

On “Dig a Little Deeper” the trio urges their listeners to search more deeply when exploring music tastes and to avoid the superficiality of most contemporary music. Perhaps if they had listened to their own advice and delved past the surface layer that confines nearly all of the songs on the album to being weak attempts at the glory of “Young Folks,” “Gimme Some” might have finally removed the trio’s omnipresent and demeaning ‘one hit wonder’ label.