“They’ve played seven gigs in five days and they’re not even breaking a sweat!” exclaimed zealous emcee Todd Ortego in his introduction of the Pine Leaf Boys at Grant Street Dance Hall’s Lundi Gras celebration. Since they made such a Herculean run look so effortless and never faltered in delivering commanding performances, one has to wonder if they ever do break a sweat.

Good question. Since the Pine Leaf Boys’ inception in April 2005, they’ve been one of Acadiana’s fastest rising traditional Cajun-Creole bands, developing and growing at a meteoric pace. Though there are many contributing factors for their success—attacking the music with irrepressible verve and tenacity, to name two—they’ve also become a formidable draw, not only with the older dance crowd but teenagers and college-age crowds, largely due to their youthful demeanor and unstoppable rock-n-roll energy.

Steady gigging can’t hurt either, especially on the road, which has allowed the band to grow and become more comfortable with each other. So comfortable, in fact, that the Pine Leaf Boys have gotten to the point where they’ll write new songs and create arrangements anywhere, sometimes even onstage during a performance.

“I often hear Drew [Simon], our drummer, shout out something behind me, which is telling the rest of the band what he wants them to do,” accordionist Wilson Savoy explains. “If he yells, ‘Yeah Paul,’ this means we are going to do a move we learned from Paul Daigle, which breaks the song into two beats,” an example of which can be heard on “Mon Coeur Fait Mal.”

Such tightened musicianship is clearly evident on their sophomore disc. Of its 14 songs, the band wrote seven originals, a staggering feat if you consider that the average Cajun CD maybe has half that many. Of these seven, fiddler Cedric Watson penned the lion’s share, including the exhilarating “Mon Coeur Fait Mal” and “Creole Mardi Gras,” both of which are composites of Cajun and Creole influences.

Yet, unlike a lot of supposedly “new” French music where the melodies are distinctly familiar because they were blatantly borrowed and recast with new lyrics, these tunes stand as distinctively original. Still, it’s easy to imagine the Pine Leaf Boys’ blitzing, whirling two-steps and stately flowing waltzes being played a generation or two ago by their elders.

Although the Pine Leaf Boys do a magnificent job of blending originals with selections from undisputed greats Austin Pitre, Nathan Abshire and Belton Richard, there is also atypical material that’s beyond typical dancehall fare. Guitarist Jon Bertrand wrote a spirited juré (a syncopated foot-stomping, hand-clapping call-and-response a cappella song that historically predates Creole la-la) to honor the overlooked victims of Hurricane Rita. Watson leads the way on a scintillating, low-down-and-dirty French blues (“Ma Petite Femme”) featuring Bertrand’s busting licks and Savoy’s jaw-dropping piano playing. No doubt they cover a lot of ground on Blues du Musicien, but what’s even more exciting is where the band is headed next.