Pete Yorn is putting the finishing touches on his new record, Day I Forgot, in the same Culver City, California, garage where he made his 2001 hit debut, Musicforthemorningafter. The album will also feature one of the same musical guests: R.E.M.'s Peter Buck on guitar. However, Yorn is not trying to duplicate Music's formula; he and producers Walt Vincent and Brad Wood merely wanted to pick up where they left off two years ago.

"When we finished the last record, we were really just starting to figure out where we could go," Yorn says. "This one, I worked with most of the same guys, and we knew how to get what we wanted faster, as opposed to just kind of experimenting. I'm excited about it. It feels fresh."

"Everyone who hears it says it sounds really different," he continues, "like more of a rock record, but I'm so close to it that I don't notice. It makes sense to me -- it sounds like the next thing."

Yorn has twenty songs already recorded, but the final product, due early next year, may feature little more than half that many. "Everything I'm doing right now is kind of extra," he says. "I just want to make sure I have everything I wanted to explore on this record . . . 'The Depths of Pete Yorn.'"

From his karaoke act, not his depths, came the idea to record Mark James' "Suspicious Minds" -- a song Elvis put his indelible stamp on in 1969. "I was doing a radio show with some contest winners," Yorn says, "and someone asked me what song I liked to do in karaoke. Of course I said, 'Suspicious Minds.' The last time I did it, I was singing 'Caught in a trap . . .' and swinging the microphone around, and I whacked my bass player in the elbow."

He told Lisa Marie Presley of his interest, and she put in a call to the Sweet Inspirations, the legendary vocal group that sang back-up on the King's original recording (not to mention most of his albums from that period, as well as records from Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Aretha Franklin).

"These were Elvis' singers," Yorn says incredulously. "They toured with him for years. They were great girls, really nice -- and they came in and they nailed it."

Which apparently doesn't guarantee the track a spot on the record. "I don't know what it's for," Yorn admits. "It might be for my record, it might just be because I wanted to do it. I've just always loved that song."

AUGUSTIN SEDGEWICK
(November 5, 2002)