What do you get when you cross a Swiss Cajun punk band with a London garage rockabilly band? Well, if it’s not a contrived record company manoeuvre, but instead came about because the two bands just happened to bump into each other at a festival and got along like a house on fire, you get a wonderfully organic, rough-edged party of an album which makes you suspect that the genre of Cajun punk garage rockabilly has always been with us.
Perhaps part of this record’s success lies in the fact that both bands are only trios, so Hipbone Slim brought a double bass to the table, and Mama Rosin a melodeon and banjo. So it’s not a case of, say, too many guitarists spoiling the broth. Clarity of vision is also guaranteed by the fact that lead vocals are taken by each band’s singer in turn on the 12 tracks here. In effect this means the Cajun vibe holds sway on banjo-led tunes like “Quel espoir?”, and the blues becomes the dominant gene in “Killing Two Birds With One Stone”. But despite this divide, the best moments are when their two worlds mesh. But remarkably the whole thing hangs together as a single cohesive piece of work.
From the slow prowl of the Waits-ish (though not in a pastiche kind of way) “Voodoo Walking” to the reverb-heavy subterranean crawl of “Swamp Water” on which the ghostly melodeon functions as a perfect backdrop to some dog-howling guitar soloing and an Elvis-with-a-hangover lead vocal. But generally the best tracks are the ones which Robin Gilrod of Mama Rosin takes the lead on. There’s a pleasing echo (rather than any deliberate mimicry) of Joe Strummer in his slightly nasal but passionate drawl. It’s rare these days for an album to retain the grit, energy and camaraderie that went into the making of it, and although the stylistic parallels are minimal, I am reminded of listening to Rod Stewart and the Faces at their most carefree and hedonistic. And believe me, there’s no greater praise.
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