Straight Allons

Kyle Huval is a 20-something Cajun accordionist from Eunice, Louisiana. Straight Allons is his second album and proves as refreshing as a cold beer on a hot Louisiana evening. Huval, who also sings and plays pedal steel guitar, leads a tight unit (fiddle, guitar, drums) who perform straight-down-the-line Cajun music. Young as Huval is, he plays a very traditional style, the kind that has rocked dance halls around Lafayette for decades. Most of the songs are sung in Cajun French and English, while Huval proves himself a decent songwriter on originals like ‘Day After Day’, which sits comfortably alongside such classics as Nathan Abshire's ‘Choupique Two Step’, Shirley Bergeron's ‘Fais Do Do’ and an energised reading of Jimmy C Newman's ‘Sugar Bee’. The band also deliver a joyous take on ‘Don’t Mess Around With Jim', a song by the late pop-folk singer-songwriter Jim Croce. There are no surprises here – no attempts to fuse Cajun with rock or rap or country, as is so often the way. Instead you get an album of dynamic contemporary Cajun music. C'mon, get up and dance the two-step!