Rob Christensen: Press

With a peculiar flair for honesty and emotional confession, Rob Christensen takes standard guitar-oriented rock tunes and infuses his own sense of personal isolation and familiar anxiety into the straight-ahead rhythms. Kind of like a Tom Petty listening to the MC5 on his Walkman while strolling through Eureka on a Sunday night, Christensen keeps the energy moving without it ever getting beyond his humble control. With the spirit of the Replacements moving through simple keyboard programming and basic catchy guitar riffs, Smile Slightly may not sound like it was produced in a big studio, but that's half its charm. The other half comes from an ability to look inside and see that all the swirling chaos is just a diversion from the deeper thoughts about life, love, drinking, sadness, and poetic relief. - Chris Lauer, Anthem Monthly, November 1994.

If I didn't know better, I'd think Smile Slightly was a new Book Of Kills record, so close are Christensen's voice and songwriting style to the illustrious and obscure Jim Shelley. Christensen is a smidge more conservative than BOK, but no less passionate and eloquent. "This House" is a deeply personal tale of a broken home: "I remember us playing when I was three/And then they took him away from me/From that day on I was an only child/Afraid to take chances, afraid to run wild." Equally moving is the hard-rocking epic "Cracked," in which our anti-hero declares: "I'm stupid/I'm a worthless piece of life." Such sentiments never come off as maudlin, only heartfelt. Recorded in 1994, Smile Slightly was followed in 1997 by The Truth Hurts, a more tender but no less powerful set. Grab both, you won't be disappointed.

This self-produced project by Rob Christensen offers a solid collection of tracks in a straightforward, lean guitar rock'n'roll fashion. Smile Slightly has a number of outstanding songs and Christensen's gift for simple hooks makes this album an easy one to immediately get into and enjoy even more for its upfront energy. Christensen will remind many project band fans of Jim Shelley, as their vocal honesty is quite similar. This artist is another to watch and it's fantastic to see all these artists making classic material available to a newfound, appreciative audience on CD.