San Francisco's Lydia Pense & Cold Blood have been serving up rhythm and blues with soul on the West Coast for the past 30 years or so. By now they have learned how it is done. They offer a deeply grooved, funk-filled, horn-driven music soundscape against which the guitar and keyboards soar, and with Lydia Pense's lead vocals on top of it all.

It's a sound you love because of its drive, its verve -- and its familiarity.

The band drives the two opening songs, "Face the Music" and "It's the Man That Makes the Clothes," as though they were Nascar cars before slowing down for a ballad. The rest of the CD plays variations on the rhythm patterns those three songs set up. It's all very Stax-Volt, with a New Orleans kick, which means you've heard it all before but you didn't get tired of listening to it.

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