Peter Von Poehl announces new album, out on June the 4th

According to the latest news, the village of Saint-Forget, located in the Chevreuse valley in France, counts only 512 souls. But it benefits from an ideal green environment when it comes to being stuck inside. A few weeks before the lockdown, when the musical Peter von Poehl was working on was cancelled in China and the virus spread more and more into France, Peter ended up in Saint-Forget with his family quite by accident. In the garden, a hut. There, he ended up installing the contents of his home studio transported by truck from his Parisian studio flat.

The result is this fifth album which returns to Peter's roots whilst also renewing his musical sound. The record is an ode to his DIY debut album, Going Where the Tea Trees Are, released 15 years ago. To his teen garage rock band at 15, in his native Sweden, for lack of being good neither at hockey nor football. To his Bob Dylan records, compulsively bought as a teenager. Not necessarily storytelling, but those little finds that you only hear at home. The record is filled with questions; a melancholy always diverted by a peaceful humor; allusions to dreams, often while awake, or that of a son who thinks he is waking up from a dream whilst he is still dreaming ... Dreaming is in this case a poetic tool. And these songs are like so many snapshots, Polaroids set to music, "where, at the end of the song, you don't even know anymore what it’s saying at the beginning," Peter laughs.

In Memories from Saint-Forget, we meet animals: a Russian Blue cat, a dog, bees, a scorpion, a monkey - which is summoned within the Australian expression "monkey's wedding", which designates those moments when the sun shines during the rain. Peter loves words. Likes that English, which is not his mother tongue but which over the years has become his first language, gives him just the right amount of distance and surprise to create a vocabulary with high musical sensitivity. "Time of our lives, Time out of mind" (‘Auction by Candle"), "Where did all this time go" (‘Venice in my veins’), « A minute at the time » (‘Silent Watch of the Night’), « All we have is today, my love » (‘Behind the Eight Ball’) ... Time, a common denominator of several titles, time that passes, over the course of our elders, but also the time of the spring lockdown of 2020. Suspended, stretched, far from ourselves. Peter recalls what he’s missed: « I miss my friends / I miss my kinfolk / I miss the big smoke / I even miss myself », he sings in ‘Memories from Saint Forget’.

And then there is this return to the guitar, Peter's first instrument. The piano in the living room at Saint-Forget did not sound as it should, but as all of Peter’s guitars had been brought to the hut including a lap steel guitar that just begged to be used, one can thus hear it played on ‘Little Star’ or ‘Silent Watch of your Night ’. Drawing from Gram Parsons and Ry Cooder, Peter describes this americana as: "where we imagine sound as a space, a space where we dream of meeting”. With Sweden not being confined, he was able to conduct remote recording sessions, with his lifelong accomplices: Martin Hederos, for the arrangements, but also Jens Janson and Larry Mullins, both on drums. In choirs, Marie Modiano and violinist Marielle De Rocca-Serra. On the mixing desk, Romain Clisson, whom Peter has also known for a long time. Because Peter appreciates what is familiar, he enjoys playing with the same people, recreating moments of collective melody. This sense of sharing is reflected in his love of cooking. In the vinyl collector's edition, there will also be a booklet where you can read texts written by Peter on his relationship to music ... and to cooking! During the recording of Memories From Saint-Forget, he spent most of his time in the kitchen, which was not without influence on his new songs: "The time that I spent chopping vegetables was just as important to the sound of the album as the time spent with my instruments. "

The writing of the songs on this record spanned several seasons, between fall 2018 and spring 2020. Some have been entirely redone in the Chevreuse valley, while some have seen the light of day there, such as 'Saint Forget', the splendid opening ritornello. Here we go from the lush orchestration of 'Behind the Eight Ball' to the changing folk of 'Tell Me About Your Dream Last Night', from the mischievous brass of 'Auction by Candle' to the raw chorus-heavy 'Sunday Punch '. Peter, who first lets himself be carried away by melodies and words, crafted this work little by little, with delicacy, punctuated by visual references, from John Baldessari to Charlotte von Poehl - the sister of Peter who has accompanied him in pictures for more than fifteen years. With Memories from Saint-Forget, the most Parisian of Swedish musicians cultivates his garden, the one that appears on the cover photographed by Estelle Hanania. A garden where it is good to lie down, to allow your mind to wander or regret a dark cloud before laughing at nothing. A garden where music makes us (re) live, by its unbearable lightness and its faith in who we are, despite our flaws.

Peter von Poehl

Peter von Poehl is a Paris-based Swedish singer-songwriter and composer. In the early 2000s, he collaborated extensively with Bertrand Burgalat and his Paris label Tricatel, notably on French infant-terrible writer Michel Houellebecq’s musical debut Présence humaine. When the label's recording studio in Paris closed, v Poehl, moved to Berlin, while continuing to compose and produce records for other artists, many of them part of the French music scene, such as Doriand Le Grand Bain, Lio Dites au Prince Charmant, Vincent Delerm Les Piqûres d’araignée or Renan Luce D’un tonne a un tout petit poids

Solo Career

V Poehl's first solo album Going To Where The Tea Trees Are was released in 2006 by French label Tot Ou Tard followed by leading indie labels around the world, such as Bella Union (UK), World's Fair (US) and Speak n’ Spell (AUS). The album was greeted by critical acclaim and the featuring of several songs – notably The Story Of The Impossible – in cinema and advertising helped introduce v Poehl's music to a large audience. The album was followed by extensive touring, headlining and supporting artists, such as AIR, St Vincent, Phoenix and Brian Wilson. Follow up May Day was released in 2009, Big Issues Printed Small in 2013 and Sympathetic Magic in 2017. Over the years, v Poehl has become known for his inventive stage shows, often favouring off-beat locations such as museum spaces and churches to regular rock clubs and concert halls; one day performing alone on stage, the next accompanied by a group of male dancers (Le concert dansé, Paris Philharmonic in 2015, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2018) a 40 piece wind orchestra (Salle Pleyel, Paris, 2011) a baroque ensemble (Drottningholm Palace Theatre, Stockholm, 2015) or inviting visual artist Sebastien Dupoeuy on stage (Centre Pompidou, Paris and The Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm, 2017/2018)