Earl Slick - Zig Zag

A grizzled guy with tattoos, a black leather coat, some ripped jeans, a pair of biker boots, spiky hair, sunglasses, and a Gibson slung over one shoulder. He’s gotta rock, right? Certainly, and how. Earl Slick is one of those cool guitar people who play guitar but don’t sing (one of the mistakes of Stevie Ray Vaughn, even though I like him), and get cool people like David Bowie, Royston Langdon (Spacehog), and Robert Smith to sing on his album. Fun, right? Talent + talent = talent. Well, kind of. “Believe,” the Robert Smith song, sounds like The Cure without the shirred guitars and twinkling keyboards. “Isn’t It Evening,” the David Bowie song, sounds like, er… Cowboy Bowie. And he suddenly sounds quite old, but that’s not really that related. The title track, with Royston Langdon on it, is a wonderful guitar-slide into coolness, a swagger in black pants coolness. “Pike St.,” a non-vocal song, is pretty fun, but then “Crunched” comes on, with vocalist Summer Rose, who sounds kind of like a dusty, newly divorced woman with Melissa Ethridge damage (Sample lyric: “If you see me falling/ Reaching out my hand/ Catch me if you can/… I’m hung over with a buzz”). Then we blaze into “St. Mark’s Place,” which sounds a lot like late 80s guitar-pop, then into “Psycho Twang,” which is like Bon Jovi, but sung by Joe Elliott. Tell you what, if you like guitar driven pop that’s semi-badass and easy on the ears, this is a good album for you, but it just reminded me of songs like “Life is a Highway” and that ilk. Unoriginal but well produced and very well played by Mr. Slick… Just very done. [www.earlslick.com]