Swedish rockers Peter, Bjorn and John take their music seriously. Very seriously.
Singer-guitarist Peter Moren and bassist-producer Bjorn Yttling met 16 years ago in high school. They’ve been playing together ever since, and their passion for getting the songs just right has led to some nasty confrontations.
“We scream at each other and punch each other arguing over an overdub in a mixing session,” Yttling said. “… But when it comes to music and songs, there’s really nothing else for us. That’s where you have to stick up for what you believe in. If it means fighting someone, so be it.”
With three band members sharing the songwriting and singing, Peter, Bjorn and John doesn’t have one true leader. But it’s not exactly a democracy either, Yttling said.
“The person who takes the lead on any issue usually gets his way,” he said.” If one of us is really into something, you just let him go. Maybe that’s a new form of democracy.”
That uncompromising attitude underpins the trio’s third album and North American breakthrough, “Writer’s Block.” It contains 11 mostly melancholy melodies, brimming with wistful vocals and sparse, spacious production dusted with a thin layer of grime. Yttling runs one of the top recording studios in Stockholm, but he’s more about first-take spontaneity than studio polish.
“You want the distortion, the hiss, the dirt,” he said. “That’s what binds it together. You can’t grow nice trees without the dirt.”
He and his partners aimed to cut “Writer’s Block” with as little fuss as possible. They focused on attention-grabbing introductions and intentionally limited the number of instruments and sounds they could employ to give the record a unified feel.
The band’s single, “Young Folks,” is built on little more than a bass-drums groove and Yttling’s whistling. He started the song on piano at the home of his girlfriend’s parents in the summer of 2005, then brought it to Eriksson, who laid down a simple drum pattern to complement Yttling’s bass line.
“I had to give the band a sense of the melody, so I just started whistling the verse,” he said. “And everybody liked it, so it stuck.”
It worked so well the band decided to include whistling on several other tracks. For three collaborators who are as much obsessed music fans as they are musicians, such single-mindedness is par for the course.
“We buy records all the time …” Yttling said. “We give music to each other all the time, and point out stuff we like. I can work in a studio for 12 hours and then go home and listen to more music. I never get bored with it.”
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Peter, Bjorn and John
When: 7 and 10:30 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western Ave.
