Tongue & Groove - Flick The Glitch EP

Largely derived from old-timey blues tunes (even when the songwriting credits are given to bandmembers), this is pleasant if unremarkable good-timey rock with an Old West bar band feel. Hughes comes off a bit like a minor league Janis Joplin on cuts like "Sidetrack" and "Rocks for My Pillow," although she has a more audible debt to pre-World War II vaudevillian blues singers (best heard on Mance Lipscomb's "Cherry Ball"), and none of Joplin's gritty rasp. When Mike Ferguson takes over with his characterless lead vocals, it's kind of yawnsville. "Fallin' Apart," the one number written by Dan Hicks, is characteristic of the wry, witty folk-rock-western swing tunes that are his forte; a version by Hicks appeared on the Early Hicks CD.