Tombstone

The Hot 8 Brass Band have made a huge impact in the UK over the last six months. Towards the end of 2012 they released their acclaimed second album The Life & Times Of…, which landed them on BBC radio playlists with their raw reinterpretation of The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’. They then sold out every venue in a March tour to crowds who partied like crazy to their raw, uncut funk. That Tombstone has arrived so quickly is both a conscious move on the part of the band's label to capitalise on their new popularity, and an acknowledgment that their debut album dated back to 2004: this band have had the time to work up a lot of new material.

Tombstone has death as its theme, with several tunes celebrating a lost friend or bandmember (four Hot 8 members have gone to early graves). But this is not a sombre album. Instead, the band cook up huge, greasy slices of New Orleans brass, invite local rappers to lead the celebrations on tunes like ‘Tombstone Intro’ and ‘We Goin’ Make It’, and build a Second Line street-party strut. Not all tracks here deal with death: ‘Big Girl’ is dedicated to the large ladies who like to shake it on the dance floor, ‘Hot 8 Shit’ is a party jam and ‘We Goin’ Make It’ celebrates the band and their city's survival. If not quite as strong as The Life & Times Of…, which, after all, announced the band's return after a long absence and featured their fiercest material – Tombstone is, nonetheless, a very strong album.