HIT PICK

Sherri Jackson, with Sweet Water Well, Thursday, January 18, at the Bluebird Theater, doesn't need much to make her music: a guitar and a couple of backing musicians--plus the occasional throat lozenge--and she's set. That's because she's an incisive lyricist, a dynamic performer (deceptively offhand, thoroughly engaging) and a rapidly improving guitarist whose compositions are growing in complexity and variety with each passing month. With at least one national tour already under her belt, Jackson seems poised for the next step in her career, and well she should be. Proof that "singer-songwriter" need not be seen as a pejorative term.