Cajun Dance Party - The Colourful Life (XL)
3/5
By: Dickon Stone
The titular opening track on Cajun Dance Party's debut album The Colourful Life sets the optimistic tone for this happy-go-lucky feel-good LP really rather well. Riddled with brass, strings, piano trills; there is something reminiscent of a sunny day on the riverside about the whole thing. Composed almost entirely of catchy riffs, up-beat rhythms and sing-along lyrics, there isn't much missing from Cajun Dance Party's debut.
There's the twinkly-folksy, 'No Joanna', 'The Race' is a Wild-West-twist-contest and 'The Next Untouchable' sounds like a Kooks B-side (in a good way, honest!), but the champion of the lot is 'Amylase', which erupts triumphantly with touches of blues rock, dancehall polka-dot dresses and a breakdown section that not only gets you singing along but will be echoing in your head for the rest of the day ("You are the catalyst that makes things faster, amylase will dry up the plaster...").
Overall, we'd really enjoy it if this were a crossover success in the same way The Kooks were. Cajun Dance Party tick all the boxes; in fact I would even go so far as to say that had I not seen the name on the CD, I could have been mistaken for a moment into thinking this was the new Kooks record (and I'd have been impressed). But there's more of an edge about it, something of the Mystery Jets too; small experimental sections with detuned piano, children's vocal harmonies and powerful string elements are interlaced within many of the tracks.
The Colourful Life - one of two full lengths the band will release this year - will be perfect for the picnics we're all starting to enjoy again. I expect you will hear a few of these tunes on the radio. I expect you will even hear some on adverts, or trailers for TV programmes. But still, I expect you'll quite enjoy pricking up your ears and singing a stanza you recognise.
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