The Hopeful and the Unafraid
is
Jason Anderson
's third solo album since the dissolution of his
indie pop
act
Wolf Colonel
. The previous
New England
and
The Wreath
found
Anderson
reverting to the
Elliott Smith
-style singer/songwriter vibe of his earliest days, but
is something entirely different. Kicking off with the nearly eight-minute epic
"El Paso,"
this album is aimed unapologetically at the new
Bruce Springsteen
vibe that sounds like what the
Arcade Fire
,
Marah
, and
the Hold Steady
have been flirting with, but in a far more overt way. They're mostly forgotten now, but in the wake of
Springsteen
's breakthrough success with 1975's
Born to Run
, a whole school of blue-collar singer/songwriters emerged, mostly from the industrial northeast, who were aiming for a similar blend of
Bob Dylan
Roy Orbison
: play
back to back with any late-'70s album by the likes of
Robert Ellis Orrall
Steve Forbert
John Cougar Mellencamp
Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes
or
Elliott Murphy
, and this defiantly retro collection of
pop/rock
tunes won't sound a bit out of place. From the honking saxophone that powers the bouncy title track, through the grandiose piano runs coloring
"July 4, 2004,"
"The Half of It,"
"Colonial Homes,"
and from the powerhouse FM-radio swagger of
"Watch Your Step"
to the teenage desperation of the novelistic, detail-stuffed
"The Post Office,"
has written an entire album's worth of shameless, unabashed
homages/rip-offs. If nothing else, it's a moderately fascinating exercise in
Rutles
-ization, and there's no doubt that much of the album rocks quite hard in a refreshingly non-ironic way. It's hard not to hope that this is just a one-off experiment, because making a career as a
manque didn't work for most of the guys listed above, either. ~ Stewart Mason