Pete Yorn, Musicforthemorningafter

Two years ago, there was a period during which a series of after-hours parties were held at Liesel and Jill�s place and everyone just made out with each other.

It started with Spin-the-Bottle, but soon we didn�t need the excuse. It didn�t matter if you were straight or gay, single or not. It�s not something we�re proud of, it just happened, and if you were to ask any of the people involved about it they�d probably chuckle and demur. But anyway, the soundtrack to these parties was always one of two albums: either Daft Punk�s Discovery (if Liesel got to the stereo first), or Musicforthemorningafter. One night, when it was the latter, Dino accosted me and lectured me at drunken length about how I needed to make this album a part of my life post-haste, without further delay.

And it's true; I could talk about the music, how smart the rhythmic subdivisions in �For Nancy� are, or what a simple, pretty ballad �Lose You� is, or what a raucous anthem �Life On A Chain� is and how all album openers should be raucous anthems. But really, this block of text here is ultimately all about �On Your Side�.

Nearly a year after the make-out parties, in early 2003, I was driving back from Des Moines with Jenn, where we had just seen Mama Mia (that�s right, the Abba musical) with my parents. As it happens, this turned out to be the last day I saw my father alive. The rising late-winter moon was low on the horizon and the sky was a deep steely blue, and I remember listening to �On Your Side� and feeling satisfied for the moment, like nothing needed to change just then.

But then, of course, everything changes. For months afterward, �On Your Side� had very difficult associations for me. But then later that summer, on the other side of the celestial cycle, having shed layers of clothes and countless other things, I arrived at Jill and Leah and Liesel�s on the last day of July, on the cusp of Moveout Madness, so long after Makeout Madness, and the scene was a madhouse. The house was a mad scene. Leah was Pine-Soling the hell out of all things linoleum and beyond, Liesel was haphazardly throwing her personal effects into the back of a borrowed pickup and yelling at Susie, and Dino the uninsured driver was busy piloting Jill�s car into the back of a neighbor�s parked car.

I was buzzed from a couple beers at the Deadwood and I laid down on the porch swing, in the midst of all the craziness, and Musicforthemorningafter was playing on the boombox in the otherwise empty living room, and I fell asleep at the beginning of the album and woke up during �On Your Side� and it was a new song again, and the evening sun was setting, turning the porch and the rest of the world a reddish hue, and I walked into the kitchen to keep Leah company, and grabbed a beer out of the otherwise empty fridge, resigned to the change at hand.

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