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
The Hopeful and the Unafraid 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 and
Roy Orbison: play
The Hopeful and the Unafraid 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," and "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,"
Anderson has written an entire album's worth of shameless, unabashed
Bruce Springsteen 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
Springsteen manqué didn't work for most of the guys listed above, either. ~ Stewart Mason