Le Fou translates as “the crazyman,” but it’s also the French name for the Northern Gannet, a seabird that migrates between Quebec and Louisiana. When Deepwater Horizon coated the Gulf Coast in 2010, the bird was the first to be captured and cleaned. An appropriate title for Zachary Richard’s new album, though there’s little chance [...]
Ricky B is not merely a pioneering bounce artist—he’s also an essential geographer. With this reissue on vinyl of nine classic tracks, we get a detailed map of the city’s sound and its streets as they were circa ‘94-’95. Previously only available as a cassette single, the album’s version of “What School’s in the House?” [...]
An industrious veteran of the local songwriting scene, Micah McKee has a distinctive voice, sweet but crackling, with a professional’s attention to detail. On this release, his band Little Maker gives him everything he could ask for, as does essential production by Allison Davis and Jeff Beninato. The result is a satisfying album that makes [...]
Over the last year, as popular hip-hop continued to lust for Molly and EMD, a sub-narrative evolved around veteran artists who issued quality records without compromising their original styles. See Nas, Killer Mike, and El-P as examples of sophisticated thinkers who adapted according to their own compasses. Amid the synthetic beefs and chains, the lonely [...]
Here is a document of brass band music in 2013. With urgent second line momentum and 808-esque rim shots and cowbells, To Be Continued’s new album captures a street sound sometimes lost when the genre is sealed into record. The band’s distinctive style makes that feat all the more impressive. The Dadaist tendency toward perpetual [...]
It is Wednesday night at Celebration Hall on St. Bernard Avenue and there is way too much talent in the room. If the New Orleans brass band community really were a mafia, tonight would be a summit for the heads of families. Representatives of the Rebirth, Stooges and Young Fellaz exchange daps and order drinks [...]
To celebrate his first solo album, singer-saxophonist James Martin made a unique display of filial piety. “I released the album in coordination with my ancestor Francois Martin’s marriage to Marguerite Denes in the St. Louis Cathedral, 250 years prior to the date,” he explains. In a city where family ties stretch back centuries, you’d be [...]
On his debut album, Lafayette’s Caleb Elliott takes us back to a sweeter pop era—the early ’90s, when artists Toad the Wet Sprocket and the Gin Blossoms offered sincerity and longing atop clean guitar work. For such a young guy, Elliott’s sound lacks only rough edges, blessed as he is with an idyllic voice and [...]
The persistence of New Orleans R&B in the work of today’s younger artists is reassuring, even when it’s but one hue on a crowded palette. On Volume Three, Dirty Bourbon River Show shoots off Matassan flares of its own from under the patchwork cover of gypsy/brass/funk. Driven by a parade beat, “True Blue Blues” proves [...]
Often lost in the debate over live music venues is the essential role they play in the gestation and sustenance of local traditions. Nowhere was that more true than the heyday of New Orleans blues and R&B. People still mention, say, Johnny Adams playing Uptown with a deserved nostalgia. We need those places in the [...]
