This New England singer/songwriter writes with a salt-of-the-earth lyricism that's only slightly skewered from his real placement in life. He's not the muscle-car driver he wonders about in the odd folk tune "Men and Women," where he succumbs to gender clichés, but he hasn't chosen the professorial world of the Northampton-Amherst cultural axis either. Having clocked more than 10 years with his band The Sixers, Kellogg's always found time for a solo flight from time to time. Blunderstone Rookery takes its name from a character in Charles Dickens' David Copperfield (perhaps he's more professorial after all). Its songs arguably fare better without the need to use each member of his band. Smooth midtempo rockers like "Lost and Found," "Forgive You, Forgive Me," and "Crosses" sound nicked from the Tom Petty catalog, given how inspired yet classically standard-issue are the results. With orchestration, Kellogg stares down his likely fate in the unflinching "I Don't Want to Die on the Road."
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