Dan Hicks: Beatin' The Heat : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

No one will ever accuse Dan Hicks of flooding the market. Beatin' the Heat is the idiosyncratic singer-guitarist's first studio album since 1978, and only the seventh album in a career that dates back to the Sixties. It is a dandy, jumping set, with all the essential elements of Hicks' campy cabaret intact: acoustic guitar and stand-up bass, gypsy-jazz fiddle, female singers repeating and riposting his lines. Hicks remains a curmudgeon with a crusty but mellow voice and a repertoire of witty, jaded songs becoming of a character who once remarked, "I'm the only hip person there is." A striking remake of Hicks' best-known song, "I Scare Myself," samples the click of a camera's shutter and features guest vocals from Rickie Lee Jones. A cover of Tom Waits' "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)" suits Hicks' barfly persona perfectly. Hicks merrily jives his way through "Chattanooga Shoe-Shine Boy" and serves up such sparkling originals as "Strike While It's Hot!" "Doin' It!" and "Hell I'd Go!" A bunch of notables show up to endorse and pay tribute -- Elvis Costello, Brian Setzer and Waits himself among them - but no one steals Hicks' show. With tunes like "I Don't Want Love," which argues for food over amore -- "If love makes you give up corn dogs and mustard . . . I don't want love" -- how could they? (RS 851)

PARKE PUTERBAUGH