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After 13 years, Boston's Count Zero returns to say they 'Thought So'
Ask Count Zero’s Peter Moore why it took his band 13 years to make a new record, and he shrugs. “I’ve just been busy,” he says, ticking off his last week: gigs in Boston and Woodstock, New York with both original and tribute bands, production and engineering work in his home studio, piano lessons, and everything else that comes with being a full-time musician in Boston.
“There were times where six months would go by before I could open up ProTools and track my vocals to a song we had started three years before,” says Moore, a 2023 Boston Music Award nominee for Session Musician of the Year with a long history of composing music for video games. (A Count Zero song used in Guitar Hero II, “Radium Eyes,” has been streamed over a million times.)
It’s a good thing that Moore finally found some time for his own music. The new album, “Thought So” (out Nov. 8), shows how the band’s sharp, thoughtful and gloriously off-kilter art-rock has evolved since its 1997 debut “Affluenza." (That first disc actually came out a few months before a PBS documentary popularized the term.)
Early Count Zero proudly played up its funk side in a very ‘90s way. But the new album’s first single, “Overthinking,” a song inspired by a friend who seemed needlessly worried about a perceived professional crisis, instead has harmonies that would make the Beach Boys jealous — and maybe a bit confused as well.
“It helps to have strong singers,” says Moore of the band’s current lineup. “So it made me realize that we can do these weird harmonies, and even get close to it when we play these songs live.”
One thing that hasn’t changed is the presence of guitarist Will Ragano, who has been playing in bands with Moore for about 40 years. The two met at Berklee College of Music and their student band evolved into Think Tree, a late 1980s/early ‘90s experimental synth-pop outfit who, like many Boston bands of that era, were WFNX darlings who got signed to a major label and toured internationally. One of their many fans was Amanda Palmer, who recently wrote that Moore was her “teenage idol,” and who would later take Count Zero out as her opener for a Dresden Dolls tour.
Bassist Mike Corbett and drummer Shawn Marquis were both fans who ended up joining the band about a decade ago. The most recent addition, keyboardist Jude Heichelbech, had recorded with a different band at Moore’s studio. He loved her song “With a Feather” and reimagined how it could work as a Count Zero song, resulting in her gorgeous voice providing the lead vocals for the track.
Count Zero has long offered bracing perspectives on technology society, something that continues on “Thought So” with tracks like “Never Be Alone,” about how nearly all of us have granted big tech constant surveillance over our lives, and “Tail Bites Dog,” a song about rebellion that was inspired by feminist author Susan Faludi’s still timely 1991 book “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.”
But Moore has also penned some songs that give an empathetic look at people going through difficult times. He says “Girl on a Corner” was inspired when he was visiting a friend in Oakland and on multiple occasions briefly caught the eye of a woman living in a tent encampment. “Seeing that person who was suffering just made me think about what is her life like?” says Moore.
Despite its luscious harmonies, “Riding A Wave” isn’t an ode to surfing. Rather it’s the tale of a musician who relapses while on tour. Moore says that ironically he wrote the song right around the time that Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell, who had long struggled with addiction, died by suicide. “Now I picture Chris Cornell when I’m singing it,” he says.
Now Count Zero is preparing to play the songs live on Nov. 8 at its release show at Sonia in Cambridge sponsored by BumbleBee Radio, the online station run by WBZ News helicopter reporter Kristen Eck.
As much as Moore enjoys playing his own music live, he says he always learns something when he plays someone else’s tunes. It’s something he did as the keyboardist and lead vocalist for multiple Blue Man Group tours, including one that saw them opening for David Bowie, and it’s still something that he does when the all-star cover band the Handymen or singer-songwriter Amber Angelina play the Plough and Stars in Cambridge.
“Every time you learn a song, you’re learning someone’s technique,” Moore says. “And when you're stuck for an idea, it’s great to be able to call that up and know how to apply it.”
Count Zero's new album “Thought So” is out Nov. 8. The band will play an album release show the same date at Sonia in Cambridge with Lovina Falls and Singer Mali.
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
