Andrew Anderson - Clean Yerself

It's always a tremendous pleasure to encounter new music from the creative mind of Andrew Anderson. Clean Yerself is the third album I've reviewed this year that has prominently featured his songwriting talents. It's clear that Andrew is a prolific artist. But it's the quality of his output, not the quantity, that I most admire. Clean Yerself, his new solo effort, is essentially an album that came to be by accident. Andrew had written and recorded a bunch of songs that didn't quite fit his other bands Proto Idiot and Freak Genes. He put those songs on a playlist, gave it a listen, and quickly realized he had himself a solo album. So here we are! If you like Proto Idiot and Freak Genes, you will like this album. If you like eccentric but well-crafted pop songs, you will like this album. If you like synth-pop by way of indie rock, you will like this album.

On this release, you can hear many of Andrew's signature influences come together: the quirky pop of Soft Boys, the punk goes to art school stylings of early Wire, the quintessentially British songwriting of Ray Davies, and the early '80s synth-pop that so clearly informed the most recent Freak Genes album. Clean Yerself is a wonderful little record. It exudes a spirit of experimentalism and playful creativity, yet it also embraces the minimalism of punk rock (average song length is one minute, 49 seconds). This is definitely not an album lacking in catchy pop tunes. The upbeat "It's Not For Me" could not be any more of an earworm. "You Know Me Too Well" sounds like a song Vince Clarke might have written for The Cure 35 years ago. Elsewhere, Andrew plays around with all sorts of intriguing ideas. "Baroque", appropriately enough, sounds like baroque pop on acid. The 20-second burst "You're Too Close" is like hardcore punk with synthesizers. "Uncertain Jazz" is a whimsical and wonderfully weird instrumental. "Cannot Repeat" sounds like a song Andrew might have sneaked into a church in the middle of the night to perform - and yet for all of its quirks, it's beautifully-written and genuinely profound.

Clean Yerself is available as a free download from Rigmarole Records, but don't go dismissing this material as mere odds & ends. These are brilliant songs that fit together remarkably well considering the entirely unplanned nature of this project. It's got to be hard to objective about your own art, but Andrew had the right instincts to hear these songs and know they needed to be an album. I highly recommend taking advantage of the opportunity to own this delightful creation for free. In a world that's more divided than ever, getting clean is certainly a cause we can all stand behind.



-L.R.

https://rigmarolerecords.bandcamp.com/album/andrew-anderson-clean-yerself