Bayou Monster The Rising www.myspace.com/bayoumonster

Bayou Monster has the blues-rock formula down; now it’s time to do something with it. The local quartet’s debut

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makes up in talent what it lacks in originality. Throaty, yearning vocals lamenting about “baby being gone”: check. Perfectly placed, wah-wah-pedal-kissed guitar solos: check. Simple drums that keep your toes a-tappin as a bass line walks it all along: check and check. Bayou Monster’s own unique twist or take on this timeless sound: well, not so much.

The band could use some help in the branching-out department. Perhaps maybe spending a month away from the blues or just listening to it every waking minute until they’re sick of it – something to pull them away from such a literal interpretation. There needs to be a dose of different. Something should make them Bayou Monster, the blues-rock band, and not "That band that plays standard blues rock, Bayou something-or-other."

On the upside, the group certainly doesn’t do anything to desecrate the blues and isn’t hard on the ears. See if the members shake things up a bit live. - Dusti Rhodes

With Memory of a Melody, Lockehart and If I Were a Battleship, 8 p.m. tonight at Fitzgerald's, 2706 White Oak, 713-862-3838. $10.