Anna Rose: Strays in the Cut
“I’m gonna be straight with you/ I’m not just anybody,” Anna Rose sings in the chorus of “Force of Nature,” the lead track to her most recent release, Strays in the Cut. And even in a short, six-track effort, Rose backs up her boast. After burning things up with some backroom rock-and-roll in the lead track, she cools things down with “Bury Me Deep,” an understated tune propelled by Rose’s full vocals and a sultry, muted guitar hook, which gives way to a frantic, staccato solo that seeps into the chorus and helps make the song an album highlight. Rose has music in her blood—her father Alan Menken composed the music for some of Disney’s most classic films—and it shows on Strays in the Cut, whether she’s ripping through the country-rock tinged “Under My Skin” or letting it all go down easy in the crooning, Jenny Lewis-esque echoes of “Start a War.”