PICKETT: HIGH OCTANE

“ROUTE 33.” Charlie Pickett. TwinTone. Pickett’s high-octane, Chuck Berry-style retro-rock fills Florida dance floors, but he’s also won over trendy listeners with slide guitar reminiscent of Ry Cooder’s greasier moments, a Lou Reed monotone and a taste for trash-rock. “Route 33” displays an infatuation with America’s wide-open spaces and kitsch culture, but Pickett isn’t using his terrific taste and timely instincts in a distinctive enough manner. It’s easy to admire his rave-up tributes to bygone Americana, or the deadpan fatalism or, especially, the wounded romanticism. But most of his music fits somewhere between the Long Ryders and Dream Syndicate, without the urgency or spark to separate it from the pack.