The Post-Rockist

Jason Anderson - “Jonesboro”

(from Tonight)

Do you love it when the E Street Band is full on rocking out and then Clarence unleashes a sax solo that takes the whole thing to the next level?

Do you like rock & roll (don’t think too hard here)?

Do you like fun?

If you answered “Yes” to any of the above questions, then there’s a good chance you’ll really enjoy Jason Anderson’s latest album, Tonight. While the album was released sometime last year, it didn’t come across my radar until some of the local disc jockeys on KDHX started spinning his tunes as they reminisced about their favorite tracks of 2007.

I first heard the title track, seven minutes of unadulterated rock & roll fun, boosted with a jubilant call-and-response chorus and a sax line straight from the Big Man. I was already hooked. A few days later, another DJ played “July 4, 2004,” which added hand claps and female backing vocals and dueling guitar solos to the formula, and as Anderson led the band into each increasingly ecstatic chorus he’d exclaim how much he loved each part they were about to play. “I love this part,” he’d shout, and I’d fall in love with it too. It was like a raucous E Street opera in miniature, or maybe one of the poppier moments off the Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls in America (which is basically another way of saying that it had a strong Bruce vibe).

So naturally I picked up Tonight. While it doesn’t cover a lot of ground, musically speaking, the ground is does cover is well worn from drunken foot stomping and late night dancing. It isn’t technically a live album, although it’s recorded to sound that way — spontaneous, rough, and with what sounds like hundreds of Anderson’s closest friends singing and clapping along. And while the album tends to rely on the same few tricks throughout — hand claps, call-and-response choruses, dueling guitar and sax solos, extended outros that give the whole album the feel of being the most perfect encore set ever — each time they’re introduced with such honesty and enthusiasm you can’t help but cheer. In a day and age that places so much value on style and feigned originality, it’s refreshing to hear something that’s not out to prove anything.

Anderson, hoarse and woolly, weaves passionate tales of friendship and youth and love in ways that are instantly identifiable for anyone who’s ever experienced one of those things in their life. He sings about driving to concerts, listening to old Neil Young records, laughing, joking, and other little things that make life wonderful, but in his rush to express these memories he slips off into surrealistic reveries of homeless Navajos in Dr. Seuss landscapes that give his whole story a magical air. The song “Jonesboro” condenses all the elements of this album in under four minutes, and manages to sneak in a clean guitar solo that would make Eddie Cochran proud. “Okay,” Anderson sings, “the very next morning we made tortillas from scratch and the two Jennys took me out to the cliffs –- true story now -– I felt so free like the rocks I was kicking up over the edge I wanted to jump right in — yo! — and swim to Memphis, sing the blues, get my new best friends to sing along, ‘cuz the license plate said ‘The Natural State’ and I wrote this Arkansas SONG!!! I said ‘Yeah!’ (Yeah!) ‘Yeah!’ (Yeah!) ‘Yeah!’ (Yeah!)”

This probably wasn’t intentional, but I think he just answered my first three questions.

-Posted by Todd