The Chapel Blues EP came to me in a plain brown sleeve. This fits the music as this is a good record but rather generic.

There is some New Orleans funk with distorted, chicken-scratch rhythm guitar and simmering solo guitar on the first track, “Six Miles.” But lyrics with phrases such as “hurricane don’t tell no lies” or “I got to tell someone/ that you don’t mind dying” reek of cliché.

The vocals seem to be coasting over the melodies without putting a whole lot of any kind of emotion in them. “Chapel of the Blues” has a similar groove with a little more tension that adds to the song and the background singers add a little feeling to the vocals.

The next cut, “Gasoline,” shakes it up a bit with a more country rock groove and lyrical, pretty lines from the violin, which is the best moment on the record. There is also a tension here in the words about someone looking back at the people he has known who made some bad choices and looking back at the choices he made.

The final cut, “Starlit,” combines some blues and some fusion over stop-and-go rhythms. It would be great to hear this band record some more tunes to see how they take their talents and stretch out. From the sound of this record, Chapel Blues should be a tight live act. And listeners who like a succinct combination of blues and funk with a pinch of country will find Chapel Blues satisfactory.