Preservation Hall is a New Orleans venue, founded in 1961 to help keep alive the city’s unique musical culture. To anyone familiar with the simple, fragile, sepia-tinted jazz of the veterans who used to play there, this album will come as something of a shock. Loud, funky and brash, it’s enough to blow the roof off the old place. There’s no denying that it reflects the purposefully dynamic spirit of post-Katrina New Orleans. The insistent grooves and catchy riffs will get any party going. But of the relaxed intimacy of the old guys, or even the amiable shambles of a Fats Domino show, little, if anything, remains.
