Too often New Orleans indie releases lack that innate sense of place that clings to so many of the recordings by the city’s defining artists. Listening to No Blood, No Blooms, however, I feel just as much at home as I do when the needle drops on a Meters or Rebirth album.

This comforting feeling pops up throughout the record. For starters, the primary instrument is the accordion, played by lead vocalist and songwriter Walt McClements. Its sound isn’t Cajun or zydeco though, but some other, bastard creature of the swamp. Then there’s the marching band horn section, frequently punctuated by haunting soprano saxophone that I imagine Sidney Bechet’s horn would sound like had he grown up listening to Ornette Coleman. There are sing-a-long sea shanty choruses the band learned while sailing the gulf with Jean Lafitte, lyrics such as “the mosquitoes laughed / oh they laughed,” and rhythms as slow and dripping as our summers.

Although McClements doesn’t admit to any explicit influences in New Orleans, he does acknowledge that “a bass drum sounds better when played with the hands, not the feet.” Even the design of the vinyl album’s label is reminiscent of those on Aaron Neville’s old Parlo 45s. Like so much else here, this record is strange, beautiful, sometimes out of tune, and always—always!—bristling with spirit.

The album is available on vinyl only at Domino Sound Record Shack in Mid-City.