Eric Anderson aka Cataldo

Listen to "Black & Milds" from Signal Flare

“It’s kind of weird to actually talk about [my lyric writing process],” offers Anderson over an early evening pint. “The notebook is just images, fragments of ideas I want to capture. Recently I was walking around listening to music and kind of lost track of how hot and cold I was and then I saw this guy running in gloves and shorts and that sort of struck me, that’s in there. Then I wrote down a bit of information about this guy, Max Steiner, who scored a bunch of old Hollywood movies. At this point it’s not like I have any particular ambitions for the writing. I’m not one to judge how people should write but I think raw emoting is sort of boring, talking about being miserable isn’t that interesting, but often people have really fascinating reasons why their miserable. The notebook is just a way for me to keep a writerly eye on things in my life.”

Anderson’s eye, particularly for a songwriter so young (just 21 and graduating from Macalester College in St. Paul this spring), is uncommonly sharp. Signal Flare’s eleven songs are all relationship oriented ruminations, but rather than the emotional bleating that frequently entails Anderson’s boyish tuneful tenor deals in precisely captured moments, following the short story writer’s dictum of 'show, don’t tell' when it comes to conveying emotional truths (“Years ago I swore I’d never buy a queen size bed, over too many drinks. Lords knows how I got four pillows but two of them would fit your pretty dents perfectly”).

Listen to "6'6"" from Signal Flare

The album also breaks the mold musically, eschewing the hermetic dude with a guitar route of most home-recorded folk pop (nearly a dozen musical guests from the Twin Cities and Pacific Northwest help Anderson flesh out his tunes) and employing a bevy of lavish instrumentation to dress up his simple homespun melodies in high style (banjo, brass, strings, distorted windchimes, various pianos and keyboards).  “I would be a fool to know musicians this good and not ask them to play on my record,” says Anderson, clearly enthused to shine the spotlight on others. “As soon as I heard Shawn Neary [of Seymore Saves the World ] play bass I knew I wanted to record with him if I could, it was the same thing hearing Adam Svec [of The Glad Version ] sing. It was a blast trying to figure out arrangements with all of my friends here in Minnesota and the Northwest.”

True to Anderson’s take on the album Signal Flare’s multi-faceted charms are strongly bolstered by its collaborative energy, a number of the songs feature large group sing along choruses and the album features not one, but three, stirring duets in which Anderson trades verses with up and coming songwriters from across the country (Californian songbirds Heather Frederick and Lily Maring, Pennsylvania’s Jordan Smith), folks he’s befriended on tour and spending last summer living in the always percolating indie music scene of Olympia, Washington.

Listen to "Tremble But Not Talk" from Signal Flare

Having toured nationally multiple times on college breaks starting in his late teens, Anderson’s sweat equity has paid off richly with Signal Flare, an album seemingly predestined to find wide acclaim once its properly released (he’s currently in the process of shopping for a label). Even given its current limbo status Signal Flare’s already managed to get the kind of national props many Twin Cities musicians would kill for (airplay on tastemaking radio station KCRW’s flagship program Morning Becomes Eclectic, an “emerging artist” write up in PASTE magazine). Anderson isn’t letting the accolades go to his head just yet.

“I know exactly how both of those things happened,” says the self-effacing Moscow, Idaho native. “I won’t go into excruciating detail about it but the general lesson is that every good thing that has happened for me in music has nothing to do necessarily with its merit and more to do with the relationships I’ve built. So the lesson is … don’t be an asshole. If you’re music is incredible and you’re an asshole maybe you can still succeed, I’m not sure, it’s good to be in a position where people want to do nice things for you. There are thousands of people in my position who merit a write-up in PASTE or KCRW play, I was just lucky enough to have two different people do nice things for me. I have no illusions that without those individuals helping me that would have happened. It’s still exciting of course. As far as your day-to-day, you get more e-mails and your MySpace traffic is up but that’s about it (laughs). It’s nice to have on your music resume. Hopefully there will be more of that to come.” As anyone with a pair of ears who has had the pleasure of hearing Signal Flare will heartily attest, Anderson’s going to need plenty of resume paper very soon.