His live show – a genre-busting invocation of New Orleans, from marching bands to dirty-south R&B – regularly raises hell on the festival circuit. But Troy Andrews, the trombonist, trumpeter and singer who trades under the name Trombone Shorty, has had difficulty reflecting this live appeal on LP.
His debut for Blue Note sees the venerable label throwing everything at him in the hope that something sticks. But the horny retro soul of No Good Time and It Ain’t No Use sound antiseptic when they should be down and dirty; the R&B slugging on Familiar falls a little flat; while a version of Here Come the Girls works only because it’s a note-for-note copy of the Allen Toussaint/Ernie K Doe original. However, the title track is a fine piece of EWF-style symphonic soul; Dirty Water chugs along pleasantly; and the two Laveau Dirges that bookend the album are spine-tingling evocations of his home town’s extraordinary musical history.
