Van Pierszalowski (center) and WATERS, courtesy.

Former indie-folk band Port O’Brien frontman Van Pierszalowski has been busy regrouping — and recovering from a turbulent few years.

As 2012 crawled to a close, the San Francisco musician admittedly was tired from a period that saw the demise of his band, followed by soul-searching in Norway and the start of a new boisterous group, WATERS. He also recorded and released an album, moved to New York, then to The City and toured Europe and the U.S.

“By the end of the year, I felt like I just wanted to get a job and give my life a little more structure,” says Pierszalowski, who plays with WATERS on Thursday at The Chapel. “I started working at Four Barrel Coffee, and then I became manager.

“Besides fishing in Alaska and music, it’s kind of the only job I’ve had.”

Two years later, Pierszalowski , still at the popular coffeehouse, filed his two-week notice thanks to an active musical life, including the release of an EP and a follow-up album slated for 2015.

The decision to pull the plug on his old band in 2010 was not made lightly. Port O’Brien had built a devout fan base and traction with critics with three albums and five years of touring.

“Yeah, things were starting to pick up pretty well, especially in Europe,” Pierszalowski says, deciding that, due to personal conflicts in the band, he had to start fresh — despite the fact that it wasn’t the best business move.

He knew he had to have more control over his next project, had to be a “friendly dictator,” he says.

When he met girlfriend Marte Solbakken, he found his window of opportunity, and followed her to Oslo, Norway, where WATERS was born.

WATERS’ first album, “Out in the Light,” was released in 2011. When Pierszalowski took it on the road, he realized he retained many Port O’Brien fans. Since then, he has been working on a follow-up that changes direction, a move from indie low-fi rock to a richer sound with hooks that pop.

Off and on, he spent months recording with Grouplove drummer-producer Ryan Rabin and Chris Chu of Berkeley-formed, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based band POP ETC (formerly the Morning Benders). His live band includes Solbakken on keyboard, as well as bassist Brian DaMert and guitarist Greg Sellin of San Francisco’s Tambo Rays.

To protect WATERS from meeting the same fate as Port O’Brien, Pierszalowski plans to keep it from becoming a democracy.

“I [want to] be free to work with other producers, different writers, or different band members, without it being melodramatic,” he says.

Q&A: Van Pierszalowski of WATERS on trashing his guitars and starting over

You basically got rid of everything in your life, even your guitars, when you pulled the plug on Port O’Brien. Drastic, no?

It was kind of a symbolic thing with starting a new project, wanting to shed your skin. Also, it was just my acoustic guitar I had was a total piece of shit. I wanted to burn that thing… Also, my old electric was a Telecaster – I wanted something that sounded a little beefier. There’s something really great about having a new guitar. Neil Young talks about this a lot. Whenever you pick up a new guitar that you haven’t played before, it really brings something else out in a song, or if you’re trying to come up with a song, if you just pick up a guitar at your friend’s house that you never played … it’s oftentimes true, something comes out of it. I don’t know why.

Why’d you want to take a break and slow down in San Francisco following the release of your first WATERS album?

We moved back, and Marte moved with me in January of 2012. The first Waters record, named “Out in the Light,” was kind of wrapping up. We’d already toured quite a bit by then. It just felt like it was going to be time to start working on the next record. At that point, I hadn’t written any songs for it. To be creative, I wanted to do something kind of radically different for the next Waters album, and I could feel it was going to be kind of a long process. So it felt like, “OK, gotta hunker down.” We tried living in New York for a while before that. It didn’t quite feel right. I went to school in Berkeley and had a lot of roots here in the Bay, and it felt like it was a good place and time to kind of settle down and start working on the next record.

You recorded with Ryan Rabin, the drummer-producer from Grouplove. What was that like?

That’s been great. We’ve done 10 songs with him, and it’s been incredible. It’s been a little patchy in terms of when we’ve been able to do it because Grouplove is always touring so much. But whenever we have a chance between tours, we go down there. This recording process has been a lot faster, a lot more of a pop style of recording. He has a very promising career ahead of him.

Tell me about your live band members.

Brian DaMert and Greg Sellin, that’s the bassist and the guitarist, they’re both in another band called the Tambo Rays, who I’ve played a show with about a year ago. I’d never heard of them or seen them (before then), but I was so into it that I asked them to be in my band. Andrew Wales is the drummer. We went to (U.C.) Berkeley together, but we never met. Marte Solbakken, my girlfriend, she plays keys and sings. She’s been helping a lot on the songwriting, and she has her own band called Elskling, which is an ancient Norwegian word. It kind of means beloved. If you Google-Translate it, it says, “honey,” but that’s not quite right.

Follow Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.