Most bands have some sort of gimmick, and the Andersons are a lucky quartet from Los Angeles who've been blessed with two. The four members of the group have all adopted the last name Anderson (given the varied ethnic backgrounds of the membership, one can safely assume they don't really share the same parents) and the Andersons also have a bona fide former child star playing guitar -- Robert Anderson, who is better known as Robbie Rist, who played the much-maligned Cousin Oliver on the final season of The Brady Bunch. (Rist also plays guitar with fine L.A. power popsters Wonderboy, so he got this gig by virtue of talent rather than camp appeal.) Neither of these is bad as a selling point, but how's the music? Well, it's obvious the Andersons all dearly love a pop hook, but they don't appear to have decided just what sort of a pop band they want to be, judging from their album, Family Secrets. Depending what track listeners cue up, the Andersons sound moody ("Looking Glass"), winsome ("Apology"), energetic ("Snub"), amusingly snotty ("Nobody Rides for Free"), lovelorn ("Ledonia B."), or philosophical ("Looking for a Leader"), and while on one hand it's an encouraging show of eclecticism, at the same time the band also sounds like they're going in several different directions at once without getting as far as they might like in any of them. However, the band is in solid form throughout: the guitars have plenty of crunch,
Derrick Anderson is a strong vocalist, and the band's sense of humor never outweighs their musical momentum (and vice versa). Family Secrets has its moments and it's a strong calling card for the Andersons, but it's also clear a sharper focus would do this band a world of good. ~ Mark Deming