Stand-out tracks: "Some Protector" "The Longest Goodbye"
Our favorites: "Old Recliners" "Sally, When the Wine Runs Out"
Release date: February 14, 2025
Label: Interscope
For fans of: Niall Horan, Bleachers, Sabrina Carpenter
No one has found the sweet spot between confidently charismatic and devilishly dejected quite like Role Model. The stage name for 27-year-old Tucker Pillsbury, Role Model has built a home out of his heartbreak, settling into a bright, folksy acoustic-pop sonic that lightens the load of the heavy material that comprises his sophomore project, Kansas Anymore. Now that home has flourished into a community, with Role Model’s No Place Like Tour selling out venues worldwide and Kansas Anymore racking up millions of streams. Now, armed with his artsy tattoos and slickest cowboy hat, he’s back to find a sense of closure on the deluxe edition of the album, Kansas Anymore (The Longest Goodbye).
Kansas Anymore (The Longest Goodbye), released February 14, is perfectly crafted to enhance the raw emotions and sonic theming of the original album. The deluxe edition of the album is everything from wistful to liberating, with the additions of nostalgic “Old Recliners,” forthright “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out,” doubtful “Some Protector,” and raw “The Longest Goodbye.” Much like the songs that comprise the original tracklist, the deluxe tracks offer a sense of peaceful indecision about the emotions that accompany solitude.
The original album closed with a sense of hope for the future with the soft acoustic "Something, Somehow, Someday," but the deluxe tracks immediately return to reminiscent nostalgia on "Old Recliners." Disguised by deceptively sunny, guitar-based production, Role Model sings, "Now I wonder where the days have gone/While I lay in bed and rot/The sun was falling on the water/She was staring out to sea." Filled to the brim with visceral, visual lyricism illustrating the spiral of watching love fall apart, the song sees Pillsbury right back in his niche, balancing on the precipice where heartbreak almost feels good.
Introduced to fans on the first leg of the No Place Like Tour, "Sally, When the Wine Runs Out" is the epitome of everything there is to love about Role Model. Matching the precedent for self-effacing fun set by "Scumbag" and "Writing's on the Wall" from the original set of tracks, "Sally" bops and bounces through the brutal self-realization that Tucker is way more into this girl than she is into him. But how mad can he really be if he's stomping through the song's utterly scream-singable bridge?: "Ah shit, here we go again/I'm falling headfirst/Ankles hit the two-step/Sally makes my head hurt."
"Some Protector" perhaps might be the most insightful track of the entire Kansas Anymore project, allowing Tucker's rich vocal rasp to flex its wings as he reflects on the power of love that carries past the end of a relationship. And in a delightfully meta epilogue, "The Longest Goodbye" pairs a stripped-back folk instrumental with a stripped-back view into Pillsbury's reflection on the conclusion of this chapter: "And if this is my goodbye/It's been the longest of my life/I see my shoes have been filled/And still, all I can hope is that he's treating you nice." He's clicking his heels one last time, but still hanging on to the ruby slippers just in case: "And I don't think I love you anymore/But I don't think I'll ever be so sure."
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