Honey and Salt

For their debut, Dead Rock West follow a fairly well-trodden path. Indeed, at times you think they'd love to be X (they even cover their "Burning House of Love"). There's a quality that runs between punk and country, without really being alt-country; their rock roots are too strong for that. But several tracks veer towards country, from the opener, "Highway One" to "Boredom." The thing is, while they're very competent and the production is crisp, there's very little to make them stand out from the crowd. The songs are adequate, but more by the numbers than startling (lyrics are often weak), and the performances are predictable, rather than inspiring. It's a fair start (there's absolutely nothing embarrassing here), but they'll need to come up with a lot more to make it out of the morass.