I’ll trust Leo Nocentelli and June Yamagishi. If they’ll record with Boulder, Colorado’s  Little Hercules, then the band’s good enough for me. If the band loves New Orleans as much as it seems to—its liner notes feature pictures of the band with Dave Malone, the band with the Wild Magnolias, the band nowhere in evidence as John Gros and Art Neville play keys—then that’s good enough for me too. For all their love of New Orleans funk though, you’d think they could calm down a little. The grooves are good enough, but they could stand to lay back a bit and stop being so Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The high point is “Hoochie Boots,” where the band backs off the hard guitar-driven funk for a little more soulful black pop in the post-Parliament mode. If listeners can’t sing along and remember the chorus almost instantly, they likely suffer brain or drug damage, and the groove is wide and comfortable. Beyond that though, the tracks are fine and the band is probably a lot of fun live—again, I’ll trust people who’ve spent a life in funk—but there’s an energy and forward-leaning momentum no funk fan here will recognize.