Before releasing his first record in a decade, Chris Belleau last popped up in the Baton Rouge-based Zydeco Hounds that, as time went on, had less to do with zydeco and more about genre-hopping musical exploration. Belleau’s harmonica playing on “Wrong For So Long” from the Hounds’ Repeat Offender album delighted the blues contingent enough that it inspired these songs and the idea of primarily playing harmonica. Though he handles accordion, guitar, piano and trombone, Belleau is also enough of a lung-powered harp badass to rip it with force and burn with intensity, occasionally even shrieking like a banshee (“Let It Go”).
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Belleau’s material cuts a wide swath: romping shuffles, horn-propelled Stax strutters and clangy, Lee Dorsey-recalling New Orleans R&B. The David Egan co-written “Angels in the Swamp” doesn’t play off the stereotypical foreboding mystique but is eerie enough with Denise Osborn’s surreal background vocals. Still, nothing beats the lazy sway and horn-swooning swagger of the title track.
Like he did in the Hounds, Belleau still maintains a flair for the novel and eclectic, as evidenced by the slow county twanger (“Hole in My Heart”) and Cajun songs where accordion and harmonica cruise and chase each other. It also helps to have friends like the Wrecking Crew’s Joe Osborn, members of Louisiana’s Leroux and Augie Meyers of Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados fame. Yep, that’s Meyers rolling triplets on the title track and reprising his own Vox organ money maker on “She’s About a Mover”—only this time it’s Belleau, not Doug Sahm, hollering out ‘Augie!’
