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By Chris Greiner

Roundhouse

Seacoast blues band Roundhouse's self-titled first album is an easy, ear-pleasing collection of original songs that, according to their Web site, draws on the Memphis and Chicago blues styles, as well as Cajun Zydeco music. The songwriting is split nearly evenly across the disc's nine tracks with harpist and singer Mike "Bullfrog" Rogers alternating numbers with guitarist Buddy Shute. For his part, Rogers prefers to swing. He's got the requisite super-smooth delivery and a knack for the genre's witty, tongue-twisting lyrical style (as on "High Class Man," where he lithely croons about a woman looking for "an uptown beau with real cash flow"). And while Rogers hops, Shute, on the other hand, grooves. Arguably the "bluesier" of the two, Shute uses his reedy, more restrained voice to his advantage, most especially on his prototypical blues lament, "You Just Don't Know Misery."
 

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