After thirteen years, Count Zero returns from Boston to say that's what they thought

To ask Count zero‘ Peter Moore is why it took his band thirteen years to make a new record, and he shrugs it off. “I’ve just been busy,” he says, as he checks off his final 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 entails . with a full-time musician in Boston.

“There were times when six months would go by before I could open Pro Tools and track my vocals to a song we started three years earlier,” says Moore, nominated for the 2023 Boston Music Award 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 more than a million times.)

It’s a good thing Moore has finally found some time for his own music. The new album, “Thought So” (out November 8), shows how the band’s sharp, thoughtful and gloriously idiosyncratic art-rock has evolved since their 1997 debut.Affluenza.” (That first disc actually came a few months before a PBS documentary popularized the term.)

Early Count Zero proudly played its funk side in a way that was typical of the 90s. But the first single from the new album, “Overthinking”, a song inspired by a friend who seemed needlessly concerned about a perceived professional crisis, but has harmonies that would make the Beach Boys jealous – and perhaps a little confused.

“It helps to have strong singers,” Moore says of the band’s current lineup. “So it made me realize that we can do these weird harmonies, and even get close to them, when we play these songs live.”

What has not 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, an experimental synth-pop group from the late 1980s/early 1990s who, like many Boston bands of the era, were WFNX darlings signed to a major label and toured internationally. One of their many fans was Amanda Palmer, who recently wrote that Moore was her “teen idol,” and who would later bring Count Zero as her opener for a Dresden Dolls tour.

Bassist Mike Corbett and drummer Shawn Marquis were both fans who joined the band about a decade ago. The most recent addition, keyboardist Jude Heichelbech, had recorded with another 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 beautiful voice providing lead vocals for the song.

Count Zero has long offered invigorating perspectives on technological society, something that continues on ‘Thought So’ with songs like ‘Never Be Alone’, about how almost all of us have given big tech constant surveillance over our lives, and ‘ Tail Bites Dog,” a song about rebellion inspired by feminist writer Susan Faludi’s 1991 book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.

But Moore has also written some songs that take 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 repeatedly caught the brief attention of a woman living in a tent camp. “Seeing that person suffering made me think about what her life is like?” says Moore.

Despite the lush harmonies, “Riding A Wave” is not an ode to surfing. Rather, it is the story of a musician who relapses during a tour. Moore says he ironically wrote the song around the time Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell, who long struggled with addiction, died from suicide. “Now I can see Chris Cornell singing it,” he says.

Now Count Zero is preparing to play the songs live on November 8 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 keyboardist and vocalist for multiple Blue Man Group tours, including a tour where they opened for David Bowie, and it’s still something he does today as the all-star cover band the Handymen or singer-songwriter Amber Angelina play the Plow and Stars in Cambridge.

“Every time you learn a song, you’re learning someone’s technique,” Moore says. “And when you’re stuck on an idea, it’s nice to be able to call it up and know how to apply it.”

Count Zero’s new album “Thought So” will be released on November 8. The band will perform album release show same date at Sonia in Cambridge with Lovina Falls and Singer Mali.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide or in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.