You’ve recorded three albums with Peter Bjorn and
John. The Last Tycoon, out this month from
Quarterstick Records, is the first album you’ve recorded by yourself.
What could you do by yourself that you couldn’t do with Bjorn and John
in the room?
Just go further to an extreme. As a band, since we have a lot of
different influences and we listen to a lot of different music, we tend
to go somewhere in the middle. Like, it’s pop music but it’s not very
punk-y and it’s not very soft. It’s in the middle of everything. With
this solo album I just wanted to do something closer to how I write a
song at home, which is basically on an acoustic guitar. I just love
playing fingerpicking guitar and being a bit more folky. It was all
recorded live with vocal and guitar, so it’s a different way of
working. With the band we record all the music and then put the vocals
on last. I’ve been working with Bjorn since I was 15 years old.
How did you meet?
We met in high school. We’re both from way up north in Sweden,
really small villages. So we moved to another town to go to a music
high school and I never had a band before I met him, so this album is
sort of a throwback to my early teen years when I played guitar by
myself in pizzerias. But then I met Bjorn and we found out that we both
liked Stone Roses and Ride or whatever—early ’90s pop.
The Last Tycoon was the title of F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s unfinished last novel. Is that where your title comes
from?
Yes. And no. I haven’t read the novel. But I’ve seen the movie.
[Laughs] I shouldn’t say I haven’t read it, but I haven’t. To
begin with, I just liked the way the title sounded, and I found it kind
of interesting to have a grandiose or ambitious or pretentious title
for an album that is very low-key and, like, homey. So it’s a funny mix
of things to have that title.
The Fitzgerald novel begins with a plane full of
Hollywood people having to make an emergency landing in a storm,
and it ends (or would have, if Fitzgerald had
completed it) with a
plane crashing into a mountainside and killing everyone on board. On a
scale of 1 to 10, how scared are you of dying in a fiery plane
crash?
I’m scared of dying, that’s for sure. Because I just love life. And
I think life gets better with every year. But I’m not really scared of
flying. I like to fly, actually. I don’t like airports. I hate
airports. Airports make me stressed up. But as soon as you’re up in the
air, watching a movie or something, time flies.
Fitzgerald was struck down by a heart attack at 44. Are
you more scared of dying in a fiery plane crash or having a heart
attack?
A heart attack. I love food. I love sweet things. I love beer. And I
don’t really do a lot of exercise. But I like to walk and I don’t think
I’m in any trouble. I don’t have a big stomach or anything. Not an
unhealthy-big one.
The first song on The Last Tycoon,
“Reel Too Real,” is about failing a test for military service. What
were you doing testing for military service?
All Swedish boys who are about 17, 18, 19 have to do a military
service test. It’s obligatory. But it’s really, really easy to fail.
You have to do, like, eight months of military training if you succeed
at this test. I went to the psychiatrist and was honest with him and I
didn’t need to do the training.
For psychiatric reasons? That’s awesome.
Yeah, because I looked pretty sad I guess. And he asked me if I’d
had a bad breakup with my girlfriend, and I had, and then I told him
that I dreamt about Hitler growing up.
You dreamt about Hitler growing up?
It wasn’t really a dream. It was more that every time I faced my
head toward the wall when I lay in bed at night I saw his face
agitating, having a speech. So I always had to sleep with my face
facing the room. I couldn’t have my head facing the wall because then I
saw Hitler. That was totally true. But then I also faked on the hearing
test.
Where do you think the Hitler thing came
from?
I saw all these documentaries of the holocaust and the Second World
War and they just scared the hell out of me. I still watch those things
when they come on TV. I find it very interesting because of course
there are still people like that in different parts of the world. And
also we had some Nazis, some skinheads, in my class. It’s pretty common
in the countryside.
You crazy Europeans.
I think you have that, too. You have a lot of racists in America,
don’t you?
Yeah. I was just kidding. There’s this line on Writer’s Block—“I laugh more often now/I
cry more often now/I am more me.” Not many singers could pull that off.
Stuart Murdoch could pull it off. Are you a fan?
Not obsessively. I like some of the stuff, some of the early stuff.
I’ve got two Belle & Sebastian albums, I think. We probably share a
lot of influences, though, because I like a lot of ’80s indie stuff
like the Go-Betweens and Felt and stuff that I know that he likes.
It’s funny that it’s called Writer’s
Block, which doesn’t seem to be a condition you’ve suffered
from.
No, definitely not. The thing is, you’re always starting new songs,
so by the time you start to record a new album, the songs you record
are actually two years old. I always have a lot of songs and that’s
part of the reason I did this album, actually. John started writing
songs. It used to be just me and Bjorn. So, obviously, there’s just not
enough room for all those songs.
We recently had a cleaning day here in the office, we
were throwing away old furniture and stuff, and we needed something to
listen to, and I put on Writer’s Block and it made
everyone so energized. The Last Tycoon is much
sadder. Are you trying to bring us down?
[Laughs] I’m not. I mean, to me, it’s not especially sad.
It’s probably just that there aren’t a lot of drums, basically. I could
easily have done this as pop, but then there would have been no point
to do it as a solo album, since the band is still around and we’re
obviously still making music—we’re recording a new album right
now. There’s no point in doing another PBJ record by myself. That would
be stupid.
What can you tell me about the new PBJ
album?
The next one is already finished. It’s instrumental.
What do you do if you have no words to
sing?
I play violin. I play guitar. I wrote a couple of songs. It’s
probably my favorite PBJ record so far because it’s very different from
what people expect. Again, like The Last Tycoon, it’s
just something else. 
Peter Morén plays Tues April 29 at the Triple Door, 8 pm,
$15, all ages.
