Anna Kramer and the Lost Cause

Album: The Rustic Contemporary Sounds Of ...
Record Label: International Hits

On first listen, Anna Kramer and the Lost Cause’s new record, The Rustic Contemporary Sounds of …, might make you think that Anna and her companions are having some sort of identity crisis. Who exactly is Anna Kramer? Is she Jimmy Page or Maybelle Carter? Sleater-Kinney or the Grateful Dead? And more importantly, does she even know?

Throughout Anna’s record, she and her band, Atlanta veterans Shannon Mulvaney and Adam Renshaw, attempt, musically, to chart every corner of rock & roll – with varying degrees of skill and execution. There are Rolling Stones-esque moments of illegal-substance fueled blues, three-chord garage-pop songs in the vein of the Detroit Cobras and simple Southern ballads. Anna’s lyrics, though sung in a beautiful and seasoned southern voice on par with Neko Case or Nina Nastasia, are simple and certainly nothing extraordinary.

The record is, in general, frustratingly uncertain and scatterbrained. But to write this record off after a quick listen would be tragic, because Anna’s record has an important attribute that’s absent from too much of today’s music: honesty. Anna has a tune and by God, she’s going to play it how she wants – even if the music refuses to fit nicely into a pretty category. It’s this honest refusal to cooperate, mixed with a heartfelt musical uncertainty, that makes Anna’s record such an endearing, sincere and wonderful listen. Does Anna Kramer know who she is? Maybe not; but why should she have to?