5 stars - "dan hicks is in top form on tangled tales, a dozen cool cuts

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5 STARS - "Dan Hicks is in top form on Tangled Tales, a dozen cool cuts." - San Francisco Chronicle
"His latest, Tangled Tales, is one of his best, blending that western swing/Django/jazz/blues/roots/hippie eclecticism with all the expected sardonic (or just plain grouchy) lyrics, all drawled in style." - LA Weekly
“Dan Hicks is an American original…Tangled Tales is a knee-shaking collection of originals and covers alike.” - NPR’s All About Jazz/Weekend Edition
“Dan Hicks sounds as young as ever, with his entrenched eccentricity and perpetual, passionate love of vintage music. On the spectrum of musicians who can play and crack wise, with Jimmy Buffett holding the mainstream end and the late Frank Zappa having nailed down the hipster extreme, Dan Hicks rests firmly in the fun middle ground, accessible and still a bit weird. Thank heavens.” - Washington Post
“Dan Hicks…no one at all sounds like him.” - NPR’s etown
“Tangled Tales is Dan Hicks best album since he began his big comeback - The Santa Fe New Mexican
“Dan Hicks music has been labeled as outlaw country swing. I would call it psychotic country swing and I say that with reverence…the staccato based lyrics are irreverent, witty, dry odd and some of the best that are currently being written.there is an underlying brilliance to it all.” - Blogcritics.org
“Tangled Tales…Dan Hicks still has the formula for a masterpiece.” - The Knoxville News Sentinel
“Dan Hicks is still delivering the goods, wrapped in his own unique saddle blanket of gypsy jazz woven with western swing with threads of blues, bacon grease, and bebop tying it all together. Listening to Tangled Tales is like watching an R. Crumb cartoon character walk a tight rope. There’s a quirky gonzo humor on the surface, but the music behind it is fiercely tight with no room for error. Listen to the syncopated stops and starts or the rhythm change-ups; take in the multi- layered harmonies or the too-cool instrumental breaks; take a deep breath and try to follow those crazily-comped chords or high-speed scats – there’s nothing simple about this stuff, folks.” - Jambase.com
“Over a recording career that spans forty years, Dan Hicks has traveled a singular path serving up a blend of jazz, western swing, bluegrass and folk music…Hicks remains an American original and free spirit.’ - Icon Magazine
“One thing’s certain: Dan Hicks has swing and plenty of swaggar. That’s what sells this latest release…But attitude isn’t everything: …the songs and performances are top-notch too in their irreverent, rowdy even dangerous distillation of real American music.” - East Bay Express
Dan Hicks hasn’t changed a bit. He’s still witty, more than a little nutty and as defiantly individualistic as a performer can be (“the band that wouldn’t compromise” they called him 40 years ago. He still hasn’t)… Put it this way: Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks remain the world’s greatest novelty band—a novelty band so good that they make everyone else sound - Buffalonews.com
“To hear Dan Hicks make Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (on Tangled Tales) a brand new song is to bask in the glow of near-genius. There is a reason Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks have lasted as long as they have, and it has nothing to do with luck or Viagra. Rather it's that little ol'’ life force called soul, and to once again hear a whole album of it is to know the world is still turning in the right direction.” - Sonicboomers.com
“Acoustic swing master Dan Hicks doubles yer pleasure with wry toasted
songs and snappy cool-jazz/folk playing in the Texas swing and Hot Club of France veins. And those chirpin' backup chicks - so retro, so hip!” - Philadelphia Daily News
The quirky legend that gave us "I Scare Myself" back in the ‘60s and ‘70s returns with a jazzy, moving recording entitled Tangled Tales that is destined to become an instant classic… Tangled Tales is one for the time capsule, an accurate document of a player who has ignited a smokin' good time on the planet earth through the better - HonestTune.com
“I was still in high school when Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks' 1971 live album Where's the Money? hit the radio and permanently warped my sense of temporal reality. Now, precocious adolescents can get similarly bent hearing Hicks's proprietary blend of western swing, Hawaiian slack-key blues, and gypsy jazz on his new CD, Tangled Tales.” - Village Voice

Source: http://www.danhicks.net/Tangled_Tales_Quotes.pdf