Trey Bien: Anastasio Casts His Own Net May 14, 2002 - Sound & Vision Magazine by Andrew Nash Album Review - Trey Anastasio Music: **** Four Stars, CD: **** Four Stars In breaking away from the group-minded approach of Phish and Oysterhead, guitarist Trey Anastasio might be expected to come up with a guitar-centered CD for his first major label solo album. In fact, this music is even more ensemble-oriented, with a core nine-piece band as well as some elaborate settings for horns and strings. Still, Anastasio is very much in control, having had a hand in both the arrangements and the production. His effortlessly tasty guitar licks are here, but they're swept along by the overall flow, in a busy but unmuddled mix. Ths only really stretched-out tunes, "Push on 'Til the Day" and "Last Tube," are good representations of the big-band excitement that marks Anastasio's current live show. Yet the rest of the 12 songs, despite their brevity, are fully realized - including revisits of "Mr. Completely" (psychadelically reprised from Anastasio's indie 'One Man's Trash') and "Ray Dawn Balloon" (a delicate version of Oysterhead's "Radon Balloon"). There could even be a radio hit in there somewhere. But with esoteric experiments, like the quaint instrumental "At the Gazebo," 'Trey Anastasio' assures us that Trey Anastasio hasn't sold out. © 2002 Sound & Vision - This appears in the June 2002 Issue