Role Model - Kansas Anymore

There’s much to love about pop’s ability to reference itself on a whim, and so there’s consequently much to love about this second album from Role Model, aka Tucker Pillsbury. For a start, take its title. A nod to the iconic Wizard of Oz line, its sentiment is reflected by the record’s lyrical content, with Tucker himself feeling a fish out of water while living in Los Angeles (see the lyrically claustrophobic ‘The Dinner’ in particular). Then when coupled with the singer’s choice of headwear on its sleeve, the phrase is equally indicative of the album’s sonic palette: slide guitars weaving in and out; a beautifully subtle use of banjo (the repetitive lick of ‘Oh Gemini’ particularly well done). For the most part, though, it’s a fun, emotive showcase of classically pop-rock songwriting, pleasantly self-aware in both sound and tone. A sonic warmth is created, whether via the double tracked vocal of ‘Frances’ meeting a softly-strummed banjo; the featherlight ‘So Far Gone’ featuring an understated guest spot from Lizzy McAlpine; or the breeziness of opener ‘Writing’s On The Wall’. ‘Slut Era Interlude’, meanwhile, may call itself an interlude, but the raw nature of the live recording only adds to the song’s emotional pull, both presenting Tucker’s vocal as fallible, and allowing the song’s explicit lyrical content to avoid sounding contrived. 

It’s back to those references and a knowing wink for the two high points, though: ‘Deeply Still In Love’ cribs so much from a certain group of leather jacket-clad New Yorkers in its style that bonus points can only be given for the literal Julian Casablancas “oh yeah” layered under its jangly guitars (better still, its sly blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Donna Lewis ‘I Love You Always Forever’ interpolation). And best of all ‘Superglue’, which is already onto a winner when its hyper-familiar ‘70s soft rock chord changes are contradicted by a wholly 2020s vocal recording, but as soon as one might begin to bring to mind another pop singer-songwriter looking to the decade taste forgot for his licks and kicks (Harry Styles, we mean Harry Styles, obviously), there’s surely a tongue firmly in cheek for his yelp of “Oh I need you babe,” buried in the mix. And it’s there, that a record ostensibly about heartbreak and homesickness can be so overwhelmingly fun, using both genre and trope in parallel ways with just the right level of self-awareness and humour along the way, that ‘Kansas Anymore’ succeeds.