Bayou Chemistry

Here's my review from the latest Nightshift, which is fresh on the shelves this weekend. I'm keeping my reviews pretty much down to 2 or so a month at the moment, as I have another writing project on the go. Probably not something for these pages, but it's shaping up quite well so far. Nice to be kept busy. Pissing it down out there, think I'll stay in my cosy study for a while.


THE BAYOU BROTHERS, The Famous Monday Blues, Bullingdon Arms, 7/2/11


We’ve seen some outstanding performances at The Famous Monday Blues over the years, along with some of the worst gigs ever. In the former category, some spotless musicians have treated the blues form as a lingua franca, using it to communicate ideas and emotions of great subtlety with a deft touch and original variations; in the latter, we find hordes of denim zombies ploughing through the same clunky rhythms, the same threadbare lyrics and the same crass wailing axe solos. With bad blues guitarists, a few simple things are repeated over and over, and quality is judged solely on how swiftly they do so. Is this art, or a game of bloody Tetris?

Thankfully, tonight these po-faced pentatonic widdlers are far away, as a righteous zydeco party is whipped up by The Bayou Brothers, a Louisiana Cajun band from San Diego (which is a little like a band from County Armagh called The Bleedin’ Bow Bell Cockneys, but never mind). Cajun music is a rough melange of black blues and French song, typified by fluent accordion passages and clattering rhythms played on metal washboards, and is one of those genres that always works so long as it’s played with enough conviction. And despite this being a Monday night with an average crowd that’s slow to thaw, the Bayou Brothers certainly can’t be criticised for a lack of energy, grinning their way through two invigorating sets, and regularly doling out spare washboards to audience members of varying rhythmic ability.

At their best the band’s evident enjoyment of the music is infectious, and their openness to random punters’ interventions reveals a relaxed unpretentiousness that makes us feel like we’re at a gig in some deep South commune. On the reverse, the band sadly has a taste in cheesy ersatz gestures, from the so-called “squeezebox” which is really a disguised Roland keyboard that needs nary a squeeze (basically the much maligned keytar resurrected for folkies), to the percussionist in the golden blouse who smiles manically throughout in a way that nobody does outside Disneyland without severe medication. Her “name our cute ‘gator” competition just about tips us over the edge. Do they have Butlins in California?

A straight cover of Ray Charles’ “Hallelujah I Love Her So” is generic, and perhaps without the zydeco sprit the band is no great shakes. But then again, who cares? For tonight, all too rarely at a blues gig, we’re not here to polish the traditions or venerate technical musos, we’re here to dance, drink and get lost in the clockwork hoedown of washboard blues...and on a cold Monday within the Bully’s ugly breezeblocks, a little escapism is no bad thing.