“The Zydeco Sweethearts” fourth Maison de Soul CD is possibly her best yet and includes a track that will certainly turn a lot of heads, as well as get a lot of airplay over in crawfish country.

Ledet varies the tempos throughout, but she sounds best in the one and two chord numbers where she locks into a rock-steady groove. She sings with conviction, and plays some solid, even if unspectacular, squeeze box throughout. The drummer hammers out a steady trail ride-beat as he should, but for a contemporary zydeco CD, there is curiously little bottom on some tracks. Boosting the bass and bass drum would have helped, as would over-dubbing some bass accordion. The scrubboard is way down in the mix which doesn1 seem appropriate for zydeco music.

“I Can’t Find Love” is a strong up tempo opener and the title track is a Muddy Waters stop-time zydeco blues number. Both are typical one-chord items where Ledet sets the pace with an insistent riff and the band chugs along behind.

The topical track here is obviously ‘Eat My Poussiere,’ where Ledet tells her no-good man not to expect any food on the table when he gets home from staying out all night. Instead she’s prepared another entree for dinner, one he certainly wasn’t expecting! I Like most of Ledet’s material, the song is performed in simple stomp down style, the way the two-steppers like it.

There’s some recycling here, as Ledet covers Rockin’ Sidney’s ‘Toot Toot’ (The CD is dedicated to the late Rockin’ Sidney.) Even originals like ‘Tee Nome’ and ‘Don’t Have To Worry” are influenced by Boozoo Chavis and John Delafose style.

Of the non-zydeco items, ‘Kisses In the Wind’ is a ballad where the band falls in nicely and Ledet concentrates on her singing. The horrid, ‘I Know What I Want’ is just the opposite though, as the group sounds like they dropped acid and forget they were making a zydeco CD in Ville Platte.

All in all though, this is a playful mix of zydeco. Like a good stripper, Ledet plays up the sex kitten angle but does get vulgar or reveal everything. Still there’s a few rough edges and a lot of the material starts sounding repetitive by the 13th track. Ledet’s got a little more work to do to and needs some better material in order to get to the top of the zydeco heap. Nevertheless, I’m a Woman shows that she just might be headed in that direction.