Delicious
Kirsten Thien
Screen Door Records
www.kirstenthien.com 
13 tracks  / 56 minutes

Kirsten Thien's Delicious is about the blues and sex ...or the other way around. Well, the blues is always sensuous, but Thien has a way of honing in on that sexual tension inherent in many blues tunes. Okay – it's not all about sex – but on Delicious, it's most obvious on songs like “Please Drive,” “Taxi Love,” and “Treat 'im Like a Man,” what the album's title mostly refers to. The snakeskin pants and half-eaten apple might also give a little clue about what's going on here....

There are some nice horn charts at work on Delicious as well as some tasty guitar licks. There's definitely a competent blues band at work here, and anyone that likes Bonnie Raitt should enjoy Thien's vocals. If there's any weakness in this collection it would be a tendency toward sounding like a cover band at times – maybe more of an homage to Raitt instead of simply showing influence. There's little to criticize here except maybe for a certain lack of authenticity – maybe too clean sounding to take very seriously. Maybe like a hot but generic blues band you'd here in Vegas. The disc also contains a live duet performance on video.

Kirsten is easy on the eyes, the CD is easy on the ears – but after eating this musical meal you might feel hungry again an hour later.

-Bert Saraco
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