California-born songsmith and guitarist James Snelling is out with a full-length album that will be richly satisfying for guitar-rock fans, particularly those that came of age somewhere between the heyday of hair metal and Seattle grunge.

The Only Bright Things In The Room contains multitudes, much of which is nodded to directly in Snelling’s self-description and list of influences, but always with a twist that is all his.

You’ll hear a bit of Soundgarden in the rollicking opener “MayFly”. There’s a pretty flagrant SRV flavor in the following track, “Green Blue Whiskey” followed by “Custom Hell” which sounds like a certain corner of the Pearl Jam catalog, albeit with the swing and groove cranked up a bit.

There’s more than a couple moments where you’ll hear the Nirvana peeking through, sometimes in odd spots, such as penultimate track “Whole” which sounds like what you might get if you passed Nirvana through a soul music filter.

All in all the record sounds like a guy having a great time with his guitars, and it’s generally just a damn good time.