Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet: From Bamako to Carencro

Bloodlines fizzle and pop in Beausoleil's 25th album. Taking its title from the capital of Mali and a suburb of Lafayette, Louisiana, Michael Doucet and his band step outside the bayou to trace the migratory pathways that unite these disparate but musically and culturally bounteous locations.

The Cajun two-step playfulness of the opener, Two Step de Port Arthur, is a heart-stopper. Fiddle, accordion and guitar shimmy around Doucet's swampy vocals, with that trademark laissez les bons temps rouler (let the good times roll) sensibility long associated with Louisiana's wayward spirit.

From there, Beausoleil's picaresque route rollicks through the breezy Caribbean waltz of La Douceur (The Sweetness) to a fittingly bluesy homage to Mali, simply titled Bamako. Here the pulses slow to a deliciously somnolent pace, with Doucet and Mitchell Reed letting their fiddles cast the shape of this voodoo-tinged meditation.

Traces of bluegrass and blues rock permeate Bamako 's companion piece, Carencro, a high lonesome ballad that marries the best of Cajun's wailing spirit with the lonesome vulnerability of bluegrass.

Beausoleil's dippy tripping through left-field jazz and rock influences swing from a jump- style cap doffing to John Coltrane's Bessie's Blues to a stomping cover of James Brown's I'll Go Crazy . In lesser musical hands it would all dissolve in a morass, but Beausoleil know the shape and substance of their music too intimately to let that happen. The French Créole fiddle tune, Les Barres de la Prison, is a highlight, with Michael and David Doucet 's intertwined vocals sustained by languid, soaring fiddle lines: a wink and nod acknowledgement of the errant spirit that lies at the heart of Louisiana's luxuriant musical traditions. compass records.com
Download: Les Barres de la Prison,La Douceur