“Sounds like you guys were having fun up there”—as we all know, that’s the most backhanded compliment you can ever pay a band. Not the case with Roddie Romero’s latest, however: It really does sound like everyone in the studio was having the time of their lives and the good spirits are completely infectious, adding punch to an already strong batch of material.
The surprise is that a big-name English producer, John Porter, oversaw this one—not too strange a match since Porter’s done a bunch of blues giants, and even when he was producing the Smiths he knew enough to get a live-band sound. His accomplishment here is making everything sound like a spontaneous first take—which means he doesn’t tone down the rhythm section, and he doesn’t miss the inherent joy in Romero’s singing. Check his leaps into the high register on the Cajun rocker “Ma Jolie,” punctuated by slide guitar and some fittingly gung-ho snare fills from drummer Jermaine Prejean.
The band’s obvious influences go back a few decades, and there’s no shame in that: They open the disc with “My Baby Is the Real Thing”—a lesser-known, early-’70s Toussaint gem—and rock it up like Little Feat might have. The Band gets a nod on “By Your Side,” with its “Cripple Creek” keyboard licks. But their originals (mainly written by Romero and keyboardist Eric Adcock) don’t stay in one groove: There’s a widescreen ballad (the title track), a swamp-rock homage (“I Hope”), and a modern-sounding rocker with some nice local references (“The Creole Nightingale Sings,” set in the revolving bar at the Monteleone). Best of all is “Rock ‘n’ Roll & Soul Radio,” which transcends its lyrical gripe—that you can’t hear piano- pounding, regionally slanted rock on the airwaves—to remind you why you love the stuff in the first place.
