Play with Matches - Carolyn Wonderland

Houston's premier blues-rock belter disappoints on her muddy, uncertain debut, an album full of club-tested numbers that seem to go nowhere without the attendant beer buzz and good-natured biker-hippie vibe Carolyn Wonderland and her Imperial Monkeys exude on stage. Even so, the loose arrangements give guitarist Eric Dane plenty of space to play, and his slide work is simply liquid throughout Play With Matches. This is a product of Texas, after all, where letting one's hair down on occasion is crucial to survival. So too bad onderland's low-register vibrato, accented by the occasional growl-and-yowl combo, tends toward the mannered and stiff -- as if the feisty spirit of Janis Joplin were frozen solid inside the chilly pipes of Melissa Etheridge. ~ Hobart Rowland, All Music Guide