Thomas Anderson is an American singer-songwriter.
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Early life
Anderson was born in Oklahoma and raised in a small town there. He graduated from Oklahoma State University–Stillwater with an English degree.
Musical career
Anderson recorded his debut album, Alright, It was Frank . . . and He's Risen From the Dead and Gone Off With His Truck, in Norman, Oklahoma in the late 1980s. The album was released in 1989, originally on vinyl on the Out There label. He moved to Austin, Texas in 1992. In 1993, Alright, It Was Frank... was re-released on CD by the Dutch East India label.
His second album, Blues for the Flying Dutchman, was originally released by a small German label before being picked up by Dutch East India. His third album, Moon Going Down, was released on the Marilyn label, which has been described as "slightly higher profile" than the labels he released his previous albums on. In 1998, he released Bolide, a seven-track mini-album, on Red River Records. In 2003, Anderson released another album, Norman, Oklahoma, also on Red River Records. In 2012, he released The Moon in Transit, a collection of 12 of his four-track recordings taken from his 13-year archives, on the Out There label. He followed this up the following year with another compilation album drawn from these archives, entitled On Becoming Human.
Reception
In 1996, Tulsa World wrote that Anderson was "one of the most critically lauded yet efficiently obscure songwriters of the last decade." Rolling Stone reviewed "Blues for the Flying Dutchman" favorably, giving it three and a half stars. The magazine said that the album "should find a place with everyone who believes that rock 'n' roll can still reflect and interpret the world in an original way - from the margins." Robert Christgau has also given Anderson's albums multiple A grades.