Trey Anastasio: Shine : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Phish's big, heartfelt goodbye last year didn't exactly cure their legions of fans of the urge to spend their summers touring the country in VW buses. Jam Nation still needs jams, and former Phish leader Trey Anastasio is sure to provide them -- just not on his sixth solo album. Shine won't win over many nondevotees, but it's also not just a series of launching pads for guitar solos; "Wherever You Find It," the longest cut, clocks in at a relatively economical 5:52. On these well-groomed songs, Anastasio most closely resembles Neil Young in one of his lesser guises: a middle-aged dude with a shaky voice and gentle tune-sense playing low-affect songs whose relaxed grooves will gain momentum and complexity on the road. On Phish's later albums, Anastasio revealed himself as a pop classicist with a taste for major keys and dulcet melodies, writing songs that effused hippie ponderousness or just kind of floated by, or both. On Shine, uptempo cuts such as the easy-rolling title track are shored up by Anastasio's spicy guitar work, natch, but also by Rage Against the Machine producer Brendan O'Brien, who plays bass and keyboards and helps Anastasio generate a shiny wall of sound. Shine's first half rocks efficiently, with Anastasio ticking off multitracked choruses and soaring solos amid the hooky dance rock of "Tuesday" and working up some Pink Floydian eeriness on the crunchy psych jam "Come As Melody." Elsewhere, Anastasio -- a financially secure father of two -- sounds a bit too content for his own good, dropping cheese-ball poetry on "Love Is Freedom" and the acoustic closer "Love That Breaks All Lines." Those musings are like the gentle reassurances of an old friend -- one without too much to say.