Rick Shaffer’s album, “Hidden Charms,” continues, expands, and nicely follows-up the feel of his first solo album, “Necessary Illusion,” released March of 2010. The idea is to have the album sound new and old simultaneously, allowing it to find it’s place in a radio mix from 1965 and beyond. The sonic blueprint for “Hidden Charms” is a proto–garage rock/blues, heavenly distorted guitar, with melodies buried beneath a mash-up of unadulterated garage vibe. Inspired by Link Wray’s Swan Singles Collection, early Stones, and heavy doses of Mississippi Hill Country Blues Bop. The basic track sound is a simple, but steady primitive hypnotic beat and percussion, ultra distorted guitar, and aggressive raw vocals with intense personal lyric content. The opener ”No Big Thing” is a short and fast rocker in the mold of 1964-65 Stones’ r&b years, with some hyperactive fuzz-toned guitar, jangle tambourine, stroll-backbeat and a frantic pschobilly vocal, where the message is no matter what comes at you “ain’t no big thing.” “Buy and Sell” has a reverb soaked guitar hook, oversaturated riffs, driving Maureen Tucker drum beat, a subdued confessional lead vocal, with Leon & Les contributing some nice mid 60’s cool with their background vocals. This song has one of the more catchy hooks, and is a true candidate for a single. “Shadow Line” is a stripped-down smooth chugging rocker, with thick atmospherics that burn with a quiet intensity, exploding in the middle, then resolved in the