On The Record

With rumpled good looks and a rocking new album, Pete Yorn confirms his status as a Hollywood darling.

For a guy who didn't cal it a night until four o'clock in the morning, Pete Yorn doesn't look so bad. True, he's unshaven and his tousled mop looks like he just lifted it off the pillow, but the overall effect is more seductive than sleep deprived. It's a rainy Friday in New York, and we are supposed to be leisurely listening to the first cuts of his new album, except Yorn can't sit still. He's rambling around the room, strumming an air guitar, asking me what song I want to hear next as he fiddles with the stereo. He's in town pretty much locked in the studio mixing tracks for his sophomore album, Day I Forgot (Columbia). "By the end of the last night, there was so much energy in the room," Yorn says, as if sorry I couldn't have been there.

It's easy to see why Yorn has attracted such a following. Not only did his debut album (the wistful and well-titled musicforthemorningafter) sell more than 500,000 copies, but he has the kind of insouciant cool that allows him to count among his fans everyone from Sofia Coppola to Elton John. Growing up in New Jersey, the 28-year-old learned to play drums from his older brother Rick (now Hollywood manager to Cameron Diaz and Leonardo Di Caprio) and, in the years that followed, picked up the guitar, keyboards, and harmonica--all of which he plays himself on his albums. But despite his obvious talents, making music wasn't how he envisioned making a living.

"My dad thought I should be a tax accountant," he explains with a shrug. "But I was spending all my time holed up in my dorm room writing songs." Still, he graduated from Syracuse University before fleeing to L.A., where, after a fairly four-year tour of duty, playing gigs and shopping around demos, he got a double break. First he landed a record deal; then he was asked to score the Farrelly brothers' Me, Myself & Irene. His family ties (his other brother, Kevin, is an entertainment lawyer) caused critics to be wary at first, but Yorn soon won them over--Rolling Stone gave his album their highest marks.

In his latest effort, he seems to be letting go of his influences (which range from the Smiths to Springsteen tot he Velvet Underground) for a personalized sound. The result is more upbeat than the lyrical darkness of morning--less meandering and more sharply focused.

And now that he's heard the new tracks, what does the singer-songwriter himself think? "I'm too close to tell," Yorn admits, settling down on the couch, his exhaustion suddenly apparent. "But it's important to me that I'm still proud of it a few years down the road."