Just Like You Wanted It - Album Review
By Manuel A. Melendez
With his third album, Just Like You Wanted It, released on February 14, 2025, Casey Smith Project is hitting his stride. The album results from more than a year’s worth of demos, jam sessions, and meticulous attention to the track masters (for a lengthy sit-down with Casey Smith about the album and his tour in Iceland last year, read my two-part interview).
It was as far back as that interview that it became clear that Casey Smith took this album very seriously and wanted to ensure its release represented the best possible version of his vision– just in time for Valentine’s Day, too, an appropriate date for an album so full of love and hope even as it delves into the heartbreak and unfair expectations that come with relationships and navigating life as a single man in the world.
The first track, “Hold On,” a gorgeous, plaintive midtempo swayer full of echoing guitars and warm strings, starts the album right, Casey Smith’s voice like a raspy wail carrying a palpable sense of yearning as he delivers lines like “Just like you wanted it/wasn’t always that fair to me,” poignant reminders of how we negotiate choices and wants when in a relationship with another person. There’s such fresh air within this album as Casey Smith pushes his falsetto and weaves it with deeper, warmer tones in “Pitiful” and “What Do You Say,” the latter one of my favorites, capturing a sense of meandering punctuated by tastefully applied psychedelia funk via warbling synths and guitars. Casey Smith understands how to embody a sense of obsessiveness both musically and lyrically, the refrain of “What Do You Say” engraving itself onto the brain with just a few listens.
“Stop and Get Some Gas,” the sixth track on the album, uses Casey Smith’s lower vocal registers to impressive results, blending with the lo-fi guitar twangs and the laidback drumming (courtesy of Derek Haukass) to cast a spell over the listener, akin to the best kind of beach gig. Then, unexpectedly, Casey Smith’s voice detonates, reaching new peaks in the song's final minute. It is all the more effective because he has contained it so effectively before this moment. It is, for me, the clear highlight of the album. It seems this volcano was only dormant, and the song, seemingly out of respect for Casey Smith’s vocal explosion, fades into a sample and poignant silence before the first single off the album, “Confess My Love” (another standout track), begins. Although the album never reaches the heights of “Stop and Get Some Gas,” as far as emotional catharsis goes, “Useless” has masterful yet understated guitar work under some of Casey Smith’s sweetest vocals, though, as a recurring theme on this album, they carry a thorny aftertaste and are often shocking in their desperation (although that’s also in part because of the way his voice was mastered in each track; it seems his vocals play a little louder each time a new track plays, or it could just be the accumulative power of the story he’s telling as the listener nears the end).
There’s a palpable darkness in the album, too, which might explain how much fuller Casey Smith’s voice sounds on all the tracks. In the penultimate track, “Inner Vision,” he sings, “If you want to know where my mind is/let me know when you find it,” his voice heavily filtered. It feels to me like a key lyric standing in for a lot of what this album is letting loose– this is a song, and an album of songs, from a singer/songwriter at a crossroads, examining a liminal space within his life and encouraging his listeners to take part in it– to be as human as he is on this album and share in the experience. Kudos to the track for some wicked synth use straight from 1984– at times, it sounded just like Brad Fiedel’s score for The Terminator. The final track, “Love Appeal,” another standout from the album (and another that benefits from some subtle but lush strings), ends with the angriest and most propulsive guitar solo on the entire album, once again showcasing the music, something not all vocalists know how to do. Casey Smith’s willingness to let the music speak for itself and to immerse the listener in the soundscapes he crafts for his albums endears me to his work and, at least with this album, ensures the musical journey ends with a genuine bang (an interesting side note: according to Casey Smith, this track took the longest to finish, with the vocals taking their time to finish and arrange; final work was not done on it until just a few months ago).
It’s safe to say Just Like You Wanted It will give Casey Smith Project fans and new listeners more reasons to tune in, providing eleven songs full of emotional release but also painful dissonance carried out by Casey Smith’s crystal clear vocals (even when they’re filtered, the feeling being conveyed is as plain as day). When he sings, “Am I looking for answers/or just some peace of mind?” in “Love Appeal,” it’s an invitation to the listener– to engage with the artist but also the human and to share, for forty minutes, vivid shards of his life.
Will you accept?
Just Like You Wanted It is available to stream on Spotify.