Peter Moore
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Peter Moore

Malden, Massachusetts, United States

Malden, Massachusetts, United States
Band Alternative Pop

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One Ride full-length CD. Street release date 09.12.08

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In literary programs across the country, young writers are told, “less is more.” Well, in the case of Peter Moore’s new solo album “One Ride,” that dictum is both turned on its head and turned to 11. Like a cross between Raymond Carver at his minimalist best and Brian Wilson at his symphonic heights, Moore has created a song cycle about a relationship on which he plays more instruments than three bands combined, and covers more stylistic ground than twice that many bands from three times as many countries.

As much a novel in songs as a conventional album, “One Ride” grew out of Moore’s solo show of the same name, a piece of musical theater that he’s been performing in the Boston area for years. Playing piano while banging on a kick drum and occasionally switching to other instruments, Moore embodied the various characters in cellphone dialogs in this “romantic play” like a writer creating a world. Indeed, one might say that Moore embodies the literary dictum that less is more in more ways than one.

Of course, while the stage show of “One Ride” was necessarily skeletal, Moore’s new album of the same name is more expansive. Again like Brian Wilson, Moore holed up in his studio with dozens of instruments and began laying down the tracks that make up this amazing new work. Aside from the string and brass chamber ensemble he assembled and conducted for some of the songs,Moore played every instrument on the album and he also sang every croon, chant and wail.

Yet this is no solipsistic nightmare of one man cut off from the world. This is a world leaping whole from one man’s brain – and it is at once funny, wise, heartbreaking and damn entertaining. Moving from pop chestnuts with symphonic grace to soulful grooves with soaring melodies to sturm-und-drang wails of gothic angst, all while connecting the songs by a kind of Greek-chorus that creates a contiguous story line, Moore explores the classic cycle of a love relationship, from infatuation to courtship to doldrums to breakup to rejuvenation.

But “One Ride” is not just a story in music. It’s also a story about music and music’s relationship to romance. In fact, perhaps nothing exemplifies this better, than the story behind “One Ride” and Moore’s efforts to complete it. In addition to playing most of the instruments and singing all the vocals, Moore self-engineered the CD, grabbing time on tour buses, in hotel rooms (while touring as the lead vocalist and keyboardist with the Blue Man Group’s Megastar World Tour) and back at his Boston basement studio to do so. “One Road” then is not only about the classic cycle of a love relationship, it is the embodiment of it, this true labor of love from an unrequited and venerable talent having taken twenty years to complete.