Rusty Anderson - Undressing Underwater

Practice does make perfect. And Rusty Anderson’s been practicing for a long time, in a wide variety of styles, with the best of influences (like Paul McCartney). Of course, that’s not really practice, nor does Undressing Underwater, his first CD, come across as the result of experimentation. It’s more like the result of a long period of percolation, with ideas bottling up until finally exploding in a spasm of long overdue excellence. Anderson covers all the bases from the psychedelic (“Electric Trains”) to the shred-heavy hard rock of “Devil’s Spaceship” (a song as pleasing to listen to as it is inane) all the way to the slow contemporary rock of today (“Damaged Goods”). This isn’t just a well-produced album; it’s a testament to rock. He has a mature sound that goes down like well-aged whisky, but it’s spiked with a brilliant falsetto that lets him get away with the daring brio of experimental youth. In other words: Anderson sounds good doing just about anything, and he plays to that strength. Play, of course, being the operative word, in just about every single one of its meanings. And through it all, Rusty Anderson anchors the whole compilation with solid lyrics and thrilling licks. Hard to believe someone so gentle with his voice and poetic with his words can also get down with his bad self, jamming in the pit, but jam he does. And we’re not talking strawberry. And speaking of jam: It’s quite sticky. These choruses are stickier. So are the riffs. In fact, the whole album is absolutely compelling, which reminds me of another famous saying: Undressing Underwater is well worth the wait. [www.rustyanderson.com]