Featured Tune: "Pines Salad" from ReeToxA

ReeToxA – Pines Salad: A Playlist of Bruised Hearts and Blunt Honesty

There’s a strange beauty to music that doesn’t ask for your attention but earns it anyway—and Pines Salad, the debut album from ReeToxA (a.k.a. Jason McKee), does just that. It’s the kind of album you stumble upon, think “What is this?”, and then find yourself returning to at 2 AM when your thoughts won’t shut up. It's raw, Aussie-made rock served with personal scars, side-eye wit, and a surprising emotional payload.

Let’s start with Bobbie—arguably the soul of the album. Written while McKee was in jail and grieving the loss of his mother, it hits with the weight of that double blow. The guitar lingers like a memory you can’t quite shake, while the lyrics feel like torn pages from a letter never sent. There’s pain in the track, yes—but also this quiet resilience that keeps it from sinking into self-pity. It’s honest and stripped down, like McKee had nothing left to hide and figured he might as well write about it.

Then there's Amber, which has this wonderfully offbeat charm. It’s a song that smells like teenage sweat and mid-’90s angst, in the best way. The lyric “I feel like a donkey in a thoroughbred show” doesn’t just stand out—it sticks. It’s funny and self-deprecating, but also kind of heartbreaking. There’s a stumbling innocence to the track, like watching someone try to act cool while their heart’s falling out of their chest. The arrangement is deceptively simple—quiet guitar, light percussion—but it holds a quiet kind of poetry.

Footscry is where McKee gets weirder—and weirder is good. The track feels like a fever dream set to guitar. It’s lo-fi, echoey, and has this haunted shuffle to it. You can almost hear the ghosts of every bar gig and broken relationship lingering behind the chords. There’s spoken-word energy in the verses, more like thoughts muttered into a tape recorder than traditional lyrics. It’s experimental but grounded in something deeply human—loneliness, maybe. Or the realization that most things we chase end up costing more than we thought.

And then comes Rednecklove, a track that’s as unfiltered as the name suggests. It's rough around the edges, soaked in sweat and sarcasm. There’s a garage-rock pulse here, but also a clear sense of narrative—this isn’t just a joke song. It explores infatuation from the viewpoint of someone who knows he probably shouldn’t be falling for the person he’s writing about... but is way too far in to stop. There’s humor, sure, but also a quiet desperation under it. It’s not parody—it’s confession in a flannel shirt.

What ties all these songs together is McKee’s voice—musically and lyrically. It’s not perfect, but it’s not trying to be. It’s real. He sings like someone who’s survived something—not in a dramatic way, but in a tired, knowing sort of way. And when he lets loose with a cheeky metaphor or a sideways glance at his own life, it lands not as a punchline, but as a nod: “Yeah, I’ve been there too.”

Pines Salad is more than a debut. It’s a scrapbook of lived experience—awkward, gritty, tender, and occasionally hilarious. These four tracks? They’re just a slice of the salad. But they’re enough to taste the story—and it’s got bite.