“Sometimes less is more,” Pete Muller muses on his riveting new album, One Last Dance. It’s an idea the critically acclaimed songwriter has been thinking about a lot lately, a mantra that’s not only helped him find meaning and contentment, but also led to some of his most compelling work to date.

 

“I’ve led a curiosity-driven life,” Muller reflects, “and I feel grateful to have had adventures that few get to experience. But recently, I’ve been finding more joy in the little things, in the small moments of beauty and wonder that only show themselves when you slow down and pay attention.”

 

One Last Dance is full of just such moments. Recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath, England, and featuring guest appearances from Grammy-winner Allison Russell and genre-bending duo SistaStrings, the collection finds Muller producing himself and his band for the first time. The songs are rich and character-driven, full of seemingly ordinary moments that manage to reveal fundamental truths about the human condition, with performances fueled by the deep bonds between Muller and his bandmates, who captured the core of the album in just a week. The result is a cinematic blend of roots, rock, soul, and pop that explores what it takes to be truly present and love with your whole heart.

 

“As you get older, it’s easier to sit around and reminisce about the good old days,” Muller explains. “In the end, though, all that does is take away from your ability to focus on what’s right in front of you, to celebrate your life as you’re living it.”

 

For Muller, there’s much to celebrate these days. One Last Dance comes amidst a particularly prolific creative streak (the album marks Muller’s fourth studio release in just the last five years) and showcases the chemistry he’s found with the latest incarnation of his band, The Kindred Souls, which features longtime friends and collaborators Eric Donnelly (guitar), Martha McDonnell (violin), Skip Ward (bass), and Andy Mac (drums).

 

“The five of us have been playing together for a while, so there’s a real comfort and understanding there,” Muller explains. “When we got to Real World, we immediately felt a similar connection with their house engineer, Katie May. It was great to record with someone who had so much talent—she just won a Grammy this year—and held such strong opinions, but who also came from such an egoless place where everything could flow freely.”

 

Muller enjoyed working with May so much that he brought her back to America to help with overdubs at Power Station, the famed NYC studio he helped save in partnership with the Berklee College of Music and the City of New York.

 

“The songs felt so good after that first week of recording in England that we probably could have released them as they were,” Muller explains. “We wanted to go even deeper, though, so we had our friend Rob Mathes [Bruce Springsteen, Sting] help with string and horn arrangements, and we invited some newer friends like Allison Russell and Larry Campbell to contribute to the record, as well. The interplay of everyone ended up just being magical.”

 

Born in New Jersey to immigrant parents, Muller began his musical journey during his teenage years, picking up regular gigs as a pianist while excelling enough at his academic studies to earn acceptance to Princeton University. A math whiz with a preternatural gift for numbers, he found himself fascinated with the connections between technology and finance, and within a decade of graduating, he’d helped revolutionize the field of quantitative trading, which in turn transformed Wall Street as we know it.

 

Successful as he was, Muller missed the creative rewards of the arts, so he shifted gears, embarking on a period of equally intense focus on his music that found him busking in the subway, playing small clubs and cafes, and writing his own songs for the first time. After releasing a pair of early albums, he married, moved to California, and became a father. While he eventually returned to the business he’d founded, Muller remained as dedicated as ever to his craft, releasing a series of albums that would lead to dates with the likes of Lisa Loeb, Jimmy Webb, Livingston Taylor, and Paul Thorn along with festival slots everywhere from Telluride to Montreux.

 

Muller’s unlikely path—and the lessons he’s learned from it—inform much of One Last Dance, which opens with the bittersweet “New York In the Rain.” Lush and atmospheric, the track captures the feeling of isolation that comes with disappearing in a crowd. Rather than succumbing to loneliness or despair, though, it insists on finding beauty and hope in even the loneliest of places. “Some things can last a lifetime / Some things just wash away,” Muller sings. “Here I am again / Another face in a town full of strangers / Always changing.” Change turns out to be a blessing on the album: the charming “Dream Small” finds happiness through a shift in perspective; the stirring “Moments” learns to trade longing and nostalgia for gratitude and mindfulness; the buoyant “No Fear No More” casts off doubt and insecurity in favor of living a more honest and authentic life.

 

“It’s easy to overthink things sometimes, to let your fear of consequence dictate how much of yourself you’re willing to share,” Muller reflects. “But if you can’t share yourself completely, then what’s the point? You have to follow your intuition and be willing to take a chance, even if you don’t know how it’s going to turn out.”

 

Embracing your truest self, though, requires embracing others exactly as they are, as well. The stirring “Full Heart” reminds us that true connection can only come from shared vulnerability, while “Show Up With Love” emphasizes staying kind and generous in the face of life’s unyielding trials and tribulations, and the mesmerizing “Fire Child” crafts an entire sci-fi world in tribute to Muller’s fiercely independent second child.

 

“My daughter came out of the womb knowing exactly who she was and exactly what she wanted,” Muller recalls. “She’s charming and smart and beautiful and powerful, and I wanted to honor all those things that make her so special and unique.”

 

It’s far from the only foray into fantasy on One Last Dance. The dreamy “Stopping Time,” for instance, reaches for the intangible across a series of surreal vignettes featuring exquisite orchestration from SistaStrings. The Latin-flavored title track, meanwhile, showcases the captivating vocal interplay between Muller and special guest Allison Russell as it soaks up the final moments of a thrilling—but ultimately doomed—romance. Even when he’s creating entire worlds out of his imagination, though, Muller’s work is still grounded in deeply personal emotional truths.

 

“Whenever I feel like I’m struggling with something, I always just end up writing a song about it,” says Muller. “I think it’s the best way for me to process things.”

 

Indeed, you’re more likely to find Muller onstage than behind a desk these days, and that’s just the way he likes it. The life of an artist may not be flashy, but for Pete Muller, less is more.