Count Zero resurrects its theatrical glam grandeur with ‘thought so’

Massachusetts alternative and art-rock band led by Peter Moore return with its first new album in 13 years - out now!

OUT NOW: Listen to ‘thought so’ on Spotify

Listen to Count Zero on Spotify

BOSTON, Mass. [November 8, 2024] – When a band exists in its own realm, things like timelines and chronology only serve to please the outside world. What stirs loudest within a blurred cauldron of the past, present, and future is the music, dangling overhead like a specter, reminding us both of what was and what is right now. For most bands, releasing a new album after 13 years would be seen as a sort of comeback or rebirth. For Count Zero, the genre-straddling Boston alternative band that always sounded like the future while reveling strictly in a moment of insular grandeur, the promise of a new album is just simply what we’ve been expecting all along. 

And now we have tangible proof that we are firmly in that right here and right now. Count Zero is set to unveil its fifth studio album, a theatrical 10-track odyssey titled thought so, on Friday, November 8, with a release party that later night at Sonia is Cambridge. The show is presented by BumbleBee Radio and features musical kindred spirits and fellow scene veterans Lovina Falls and Singer Mali. 

Ahead of the album, a new Count Zero single titled “Overthinking” crashes the streams on October 11. The magnetic track with a gentle stomp not only serves as an aural appetizer to the album, but also proves the ambitious glam and art-rock stylings of band composer and ringleader Peter Moore have never really faded over its nearly three-decade career, when Count Zero first emerged from the ashes of cult electronic band Think Tree. 

“Our music has always been dense – occasionally one might argue too dense,” Moore muses from his home studio. “Now we're learning to trust sparseness and space more, trusting the hooks, the vibes, the grooves.”

The awaited follow-up to 2011’s Never Be Yourself, thought so finds Count Zero as its most assured, no small accomplishment given the confidence the band weaponized to swerve around most of the pitfalls and landmines of the Boston rock scene. And in a weird way, the dystopia of the world around us has finally caught up to the cacotopia weaved delicately within the Count Zero sound for so long.  

Since forming in 1996, and along the way employing the likes of Amanda Palmer (whose Dresden Dolls once took the band out on a six-week tour), Elizabeth Steen of Natalie Merchant’s band, and Throwing Muses’ Bernard Georges, Moore and longtime collaborator and confidant Will Ragano have carefully existed in familiar and unfamiliar lanes. With Thought So, those lanes have not only widened, but merged.

When Moore was not touring as lead vocalist for the Blue Man Group’s “How To Be A Megastar” tour, Count Zero could be found on various live stages across the city, on playlists and rotations from the long-gone local radio and media monoliths, and across digital screens around the world, where the band’s more riff-led tracks were played by countless would-be rock and rollers in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band video games (and as a result, 2011’s “Radium Eyes” is approaching a cool 1 million plays on Spotify). 

“It doesn't hurt that rock itself is such a niche –  you can play a million different rock styles and it all sounds like rock to younger folk who only associate it with older generations, if at all,” says Moore, a 2023 Boston Music Awards nominee for Session Musician of the Year. “This band is stronger vocally – we're doing two- and three-part harmonies that are so challenging I don't see most bands attempting. I tend to write parts that utilize the talents of the current players in the band.” 

That leads to the idea that this version of Count Zero – guitarists and vocalists Moore and Ragano joined today by Shawn Marquis on drums and backing vocals; Jude Heichelbech on keys and vocals; and Mike Corbett on bass and backing vocals – has a renewed focus and creative vision. 

“It's now easier to see what a Count Zero sound might be,” Moore admits. “In contrast to when the band was young, it felt like we were going in different directions -- post-punk, funk, noise, sophisticated pop, glam rock, etc. I couldn't care less about staying ‘on-brand’ because no one style would keep me interested. I still don't feel natural adhering to a formula, but I think we're sort of -- calcifying into a style without trying.” 

That plays out across thought so’s 10 spirited tracks, all tracked, mixed and produced over the past decade, at various points, some short, some long, between 2014 and 2024, by Moore at his Palace of Purpose in Boston. The record was mastered by Jeff Lipton at Boston’s esteemed Peerless Mastering, with Costanza Tinti as assistant mastering engineer. Select tracks feature a pair of guest musicians in Ken Winokur (percussion on “BigWig”) and Joel Simches (keys on “Tail Bites Dog”). 

“Writing and arranging and producing in a studio in one's own basement is convenient, but as one might guess, leads to some – ahem -- overthinking,” says Moore, who admits balancing life as a freelancers and staying busy with other projects is mainly what kept these new Count Zero tunes at bay. “It's not uncommon for me to only be able to squeeze three hours every six months for my own songwriting in the studio. That's why it took 13 years. The benefit is because that time is so rare it becomes terribly valuable. Also a decade-old, half-finished song will sound fresh when you finally re-acquaint yourself with it. As such, it will reveal new ways to be brought to completion.” 

What was once musical debris has now taken a collective mass. The mechanical push/pull purr of the kinetic and ‘80s-addled “Never Be Alone” acts as a modern-life-during-wartime meditation on the surveillance state, while the anthemic “Tail Bites Dog” explores resistance of the oppressed. 

Moore penned the eclectic electronic experimentalist “Girl on a Corner,” the record’s closing track, after accidentally catching the eye of a bedraggled tent city resident of an Oakland underpass many years ago, and the ‘90s-kissed space-aged strut of “Riding a Wave” channels a rock musician falling off the wagon and scoring drugs on tour. “Upside Down,” a commercial FM radio megahit in an alternate universe, one we’d all be better off living in, relays the tale of a troubled kid who sees the world upside down and thinks it's much better. 

A new component in this fresh batch of Count Zero compositions is that while most lean on the traditional social observations and dystopian awareness, a few – “South,” “You Were You Are,” and inaugural offering “Overthinking” – serve as more introspective and autobiographical than Moore’s past efforts. Moore was always a performer’s performer, and his persona was never far behind. 

“There are songwriters that exclusively write autobiographically, but my default has been to fear that sharing The Real Me is burdensome on the listener,” he admits. “I usually get more traction embodying a persona, and finding myself in them. This is more of a Bowie thing. Probably didn't hurt that when I toured with Blue Man Group we opened up for Bowie every night, and I got to see him from the side of the stage night after night. He channels characters, or personae, but they're always a part of him.” 

But that’s just one piece of the larger Count Zero puzzle, here composed very specifically. 

“The songs I wrote – Will wrote ‘BigWig’ and Jude wrote ‘With a Feather' – came about how they normally do: Fragment-Ferment,” Moore reveals. “Sometimes I get a verse and chorus, with most of the lyrics. But usually it's a fragment, a flash of an idea that gets recorded somehow.  Maybe I'm in my studio when it happens, maybe I have a guitar in my hand, or at the piano, some random set of notes played on some odd sample I made for another purpose entirely, or in my car or walking in a forest recording weird sounds and lyrics into my phone.” 

He adds: “Many of these recordings find their way into the final recordings. But more often it's The Fragments collecting. They reside in my psyche until they reveal to me how they're supposed to exist in the world. That's The Ferment. My skill is to delicately extract them and feed them oxygen, without killing them.” 

Unable to be killed, “Overthinking” emerges as the album’s first grand introduction, a transportive and deliberate slow-groove song with some mystical DNA flowing from one beat to the next, aching and twisting its way into the ear like an old friend reminding an accomplice why they exist in the first place. It’s a pop song coated in Count Zero’s grand theatrical alt-rock vision, and acts to make 13 years ago feel like yesterday.  

“This is a song I started writing about someone close to me who was overthinking themselves into dark corners, but as I explored that I found it was me in that crawl space,” Moore reveals. “Wouldn't it be lovely if we could only stress out about the things we needed to? Instead, we live in an age of anxiety, and humans evolved to use that anxiety as a motivator. I think this is because we are actually better off than our predecessors, that our anxiety used to ward off wolves and bears and now it's deadlines and hurt feelings. We are predestined to overthink everything. Obviously we shouldn't, but let's love ourselves and accept this.”  

And if it takes 13 years to emerge from one chapter to the next, then so be it. Because what is 13 years to the rest of us, is simply a feeling of yesterday to Count Zero.  

Count Zero is:

Shawn Marquis: Drums, backing vocals

Will Ragano: Guitar, vocals

Jude Heichelbech: keys, vocals

Peter Moore: Vocals, guitar

Mike Corbett: Bass, backing vocals

‘thought so’ album production credits:

Tracked, mixed, and produced between 2014 to 2024 by Peter Moore at Palace of Purpose, Boston, MA

Mastered by Jeff Lipton at Peerless Mastering, Boston, MA

Assistant Mastering Engineer: Costanza Tinti

Guest musicians:  

Ken Winokur: Percussion on ‘Big Wig’

 Joel Simches: Keys on ‘Tail Bites Dog’

Count Zero bio:

Count Zero is a Boston-based rock band formed in 1996 by former members of the cult electronic band Think Tree. A true genuine article with a foot rooted in funk and an eye set deeply into the future, the band’s sound is crafted by bandleader/composer Peter Moore “weaving Count Zero tracks like a Persian rug.” (Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix). A fixture in the Boston rock scene (and beyond), Moore is perhaps best known for his work touring the world as lead vocalist for the Blue Man Group’s “How To Be A Megastar” tour.

For over 30 years Peter has shared the stage with his compatriot Will Ragano, who continues to contribute his own unique compositions (on which he sings lead vocals), manic live energy, and the “vicious guitar work that was his trademark in Think Tree” (Boston Phoenix). Will is also a graphic designer and video editor. He has been responsible for all of Count Zero’s visual design (except for the cover of Affluenza). He’s now creating music videos for some of the songs on their next release.

Mike Corbett (bass), Jude Heichelbech (keys), and Shawn Marquis (drums) round out the fold – with former members including: Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls), Elizabeth Steen (Natalie Merchant) and Bernard Georges (Throwing Muses).

In addition to their forthcoming fifth record, the band has released four full-length albums: Never Be Yourself (2011),  Little Minds (2005), Robots Anonymous (2001), and their debut Affluenza (1997). The group toured North America with the Dresden Dolls for six weeks and had kids all over the world rocking out on their tunes in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band video games.

New music, Count Zero’s first in 13 years, arrives this fall, with a record release party November 8 at Sonia in Cambridge. 

Media praise for Count Zero:

“One of the most striking things about much of this material is the genuine soul with which it’s delivered. Moore’s impressive range lends true power to the hooks." _Pitchfork

“A unique listening experience known for grabbing even the most jaded ears, [owing] nearly as much to the trippy grooves of Funkadelic as it does to Radiohead’s otherworldly electronic adventures.” _The Boston Globe

“Count Zero is a terrific live band, with the ability to kick up an appealingly angular and experimental din. It’s surprisingly danceable in a distanced, cerebral way, like some bizarre fusion of New Order and Butthole Surfers in their respective primes.” _Amplifier

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