ROLE MODEL is far from home in new album, 'Kansas Anymore'

An artist known for writing about love, sex and infatuation in his debut album, 'Rx' (2022), ROLE MODEL completely turns his narrative on its head in his new album, 'Kansas Anymore', which is filled with heartbreak anthems for your sad-girl-summer (or, healing-girl-summer, depending on how you listen...) In this incredibly vulnerable album, Tucker Pillsbury lays his emotions out for all to see in a cathartic, journalistic presentation of the stages of a relationship breakup.

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It would be too easy for Role Model to produce a heartbreak album full of ballads about the pain caused by someone leaving your life. Instead, Pillsbury continues his exciting and explosive soundscape that we know and love from previous projects and juxtaposes it with these complicated emotions. And this is exactly what the album's opening track, 'Writing's On The Wall' is. With the catchy chorus of 'Dad's on the phone and he's lecturing me / 'Bout a girl that he met back when he was nineteen / It's never gonna work 'cause the puzzle won't piece' , Pillsbury returns to the concept of people being meant-to-be, but refracts the concept to people not being meant-to-be, and the continuation of this throughout time. The song title itself, and the accompanying line of 'I pretend I can't read' tells us straight away that this album will be full of conflicted emotions and knowing that although something might not be right for you, it's still difficult to let it go.

The three leading singles of Role Model's sophomore album highlighted the thematic concept of the album of lingering feelings after a relationship breakdown. From its first single, 'Oh Gemini' acknowledging the final stages of a relationship: 'And, ooh, we're hanging on by threads / And I can't hold it any harder on my end' to the following single of 'Deeply Still In Love' showing Pillsbury's thought process after the breakup: 'Well, that's alright, you'll do better / Nothing lasts, always, forever / I wish I could pull it together, babe.' The suggestion that Pillsbury has learnt that 'nothing lasts, always, forever' is a direct link to his debut album, which features a song entitled 'forever&more' about eternal love and finding your soulmate - but this is no longer the case for this relationship. Upon hearing Role Model's selected singles for 'Kansas Anymore', it was apparent that this album would have something for everyone, no matter what stage of their breakup they may be in. The final single of the album rollout was 'Look At That Woman', a track that feels positively and chronically Role Model. This last track exudes Role Model's respect for his ex, and reminds us that while the album covers his side of a breakup, its purpose is not to diss its muse, but rather to highlight the strong feelings that remain there.

The album's title is a nod to a popular book entitled 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' (1900), where Dorothy gets transported away from her home of Kansas, suggests a feeling of homesickness - which Tucker has admitted to suffering from, in relation to his hometown of Maine, during an interview with Zach Sang. However, there's certainly an alternative readings of this homesick theme, in that commonly people say when they're in a relationship that their significant other becomes their home. In this breakup, Tucker could therefore no longer access this home, thus resulting in a similar homesickness that he may experience when far from his family home in Maine. The image on the left shows a t-shirt released to celebrate the release of 'Kansas Anymore', featuring the iconic ruby slippers, associated with Dorothy's character in 'The Wizard of Oz'. The original children's story by L. Frank Baum follows the story of coming-of-age and balancing independence with support from others, and this feels like it resonates strongly with Pillsbury's experiences detailed in this album.

ROLE MODEL with Ross MacDonald's bandmate from The 1975, Matty Healy, at Coachella in 2022.

Easily the most gut-wrenching, heartbreaking song on this album has to be 'Frances'; a gentle and vulnerable, stripped back ballad co-produced by The 1975's Ross MacDonald. Situated on the track list shortly after songs like 'Writing's On The Wall', 'Look At That Woman' and 'Oh Gemini', 'Frances' feels like one of the first tracks to fully mourn the previous relationship once there is some distance between Pillsbury and the person. It feels as though the first four songs were initial reactions to the breakups, and once the initial shock bubbled away, we were left with 'Frances'. The song has a nostalgic feel as Role Model looks back upon past moments with his loved one - 'She held my hand in times like this / She dances / Under the strobe lights / She called be handsome on nights like this.' These memories are short but intricate insights into their relationship, and highlights the simple and pure joy of their love. In this song, Pillsbury commemorates the end of the relationship by saying 'What's my mother gonna say when I come home crying? / At the end of the day / I'm just happy I can say she was mine.' In this repeated pre-chorus, Pillsbury brings us back to current-day (in comparison to the reflective memories) where the relationship is no longer active, and you can only be glad that you had experienced that scale of love. Note the reference to home here, too, as it builds up this dual-reading of varying homesickness in the wider album.

A personal favourite track from 'Kansas Anymore' has got to be 'Superglue' - partially for its compliments to 'Frances', following directly after. The quiet ending of 'Frances' into the noise of Role Model setting up in the studio into the much more up-beat and heavily produced track 'Superglue' really summarises the whiplash of a relationship that you don't want to end, but know it's for the best, but struggle to let go. With lines like 'But you don't smile anymore, you don't greet me at the door / You've been laying on the floor, steading, staring at the ceiling / I should probably ask you how you're feeling / Maybe I'm too scared of how you'd answer', it feels like 'Frances' is a reflection upon the sunnier times, yet 'Superglue' is a signifier of the muddier, darker times, but with the hope that we find in 'Writing's On The Wall' - that if it's meant to be, it will, just with some effort, and maybe some superglue.

ROLE MODEL with Lizzy McAlpine in his music video for 'Look At That Woman'.

Once Role Model released the track list and announced that none other than Lizzy McAlpine will be joining him on 'So Far Gone', we all knew that 'Brat' Summer was over and 'Kansas Anymore' Summer was beginning. These two singers have a real gift at portraying relationship dynamics in duets and telling a story in their lyricism. This track furthers the common theme of a relationship breakdown, but with the increased magnification on communication barriers. Lizzy's verse says: 'You're just like your father / Have it your way or nothin' at all / Maybe it would be different / If we could've called it what it was,' which shares a similar tone of generational traits and relationships driven by fate rather than emotion. The combination of Pillsbury and McAlpine's vocals on this track are not only ethereal, but also perfectly convey the slow burn of a relationship as communication fails the pair.

On a powerful and moving album like 'Kansas Anymore', the final song must hold a lot of weight, and 'Something, Somehow, Someday' did not fall at this hurdle. This closing track is both contrasting and cyclical with its opening track, opting for another acoustic, quiet track rather than the excitement that we saw with 'Writing's On The Wall'. Role Model returns to the concept of whether people can be destined to be together, and while the first song of the project says that if puzzle pieces don't fit, they will never, these closing thoughts argue that people are in fact meant to be together - it's just whether it would be in this world. For me, this track encapsulates the entire album, both thematically with the relationship at hand, but also with the underlying notes of 'The Wizard of Oz' with its concepts of alternative worlds. The country-inspired flow of this song feels therapeutic and cathartic, as Tucker draws this heartbroken chapter to close.

So, to return to the beginning of this article with what we said about the classic heartbreak album being full of melancholy ballads... I absolutely believe there is a place for these albums, and we would be very different people without these. However, I am so glad that Role Model took this somewhat stereotypical album concept and really made it his own, infused with his own sounds and storytelling techniques. In all, this album brings an exciting outlook to heartbreak, while also placing Pillsbury's own emotions and experiences on you - he has a real talent of taking you each step of his journey, and makes this album bound to be a highlight of this year.