ROLE MODEL continues to find his stride on ‘Kansas Anymore (The Longest Goodbye)’

Tucker Pillsbury, more commonly known as the singer-songwriter and internet heartthrob ROLE MODEL, knows his way around a breakup song — or 17. On the expanded edition of his 2024 sophomore LP Kansas Anymore, the singer adds an appendix of four country-leaning songs to cap off an era all about growing up and moving on. 

Arriving just in time for Valentine’s Day, the record’s four additional songs round out last July’s release which captured how the uncertainty that follows heartbreak can be both numbingly frightening and also abundantly liberating. The standard edition of Kansas Anymore, which was largely inspired by his breakup with YouTube influencer turned coffee aficionado Emma Chamberlin, consisted of tight and polished pop songs that veered into acoustic and country territory without taking root in the full pedal steel territory of the genre.

The standout among the four songs is somewhat predestined given that “Sally, When The Wine Runs Out” has already earned virality on TikTok (42.5K posts as of publication) — with everyone from Joe Jonas to your average attention-hungry, thirst-trapping man using the song’s bridge in their videos. This virality, earned before the song’s official release after Pillsbury posted a snippet at the end of January, is well-earned. The song’s bright acoustic guitar strums and spacious percussion lift the singer’s layered vocals to sweet heights, resulting in a romp worthy of a spin at one’s local Budweiser-serving bar. The TikTok-favorite bridge of the song is perhaps the greatest gift that the deluxe edition provides, with lyrics like “Sally makes my head hurt/Heard through the grapevine/She can be a diva/Cold like Minnesota/Hotter than a fever,” delivered with a wink over warbling piano plucks. 

“Old Recliners” is quite possibly the most naturally country-sounding track of the added songs, if not of the full LP itself. The song’s simple hook (“Thinking ‘bout you, you in the moment”) is far from genius, but has that touch of universality that can’t help but resonate. “The Longest Goodbye,” which the expanded LP gets its namesake from, is a trilling last-call-at-the-bar crooner that almost makes the standard album’s closer “Something, Somehow, Someday” seem inferior. 

Though it may be no secret that Pillsbury cannot quite be considered a vocalist, he’s at his strongest when his light twang is stacked atop itself and built stronger. His oftentimes witty lyrics are not quite at the level of, say, MJ Lenderman’s, but Pillsbury possesses a kind of charm and sincerity that’s hard not to appreciate — abundantly apparent on his TikTok profile. If Kansas Anymore (The Longest Goodbye) proves anything, it’s that maybe Pillsbury should hang up his baseball cap and pick up that cowboy hat for good (even if he is from Maine).

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