reax music magazine :: music + culture » Reviews » Kasey Anderson - the Reckoning

The beat sample of the title track that leads off this record is a straight up lift of Phil Collins era Genesis. Then the menacing back of the throat Springsteen via Waits vocals come in. It is intense perhaps, and brooding, but the rest of the record escapes that. Where this musical endeavor of Kasey Anderson fits is squarely between the walls of 90's FM crossover country and the y'allternative. His voice is properly seasoned and the band is expert. But as dangerous as his tone may be singing songs about detritus from the gutter, hangovers and hometown boys he turns every side over with an upbeat tune that has the same ol' same ol' 4 on the floor upbeat Ford truck ditties. This would confuse anyone; because how can someone with a voice like that be so simple and lackluster cheerful one second and so earnest the next? As the music moves through the tracklist, Anderson slows and relies on the piano. These songs, like the entire record raise that same question prior. The answer is in his lyrics and the recordings themselves which on a second listen are flat and hollow, there is no peak or flow into too much darkness or light but merely a clean cut and paved middle grey road of his restraint, and once you find yourself on it, it is pretty predictable where it is going.