Review

The Mardi Gras Indian tribes are a story in themselves, African-Americans who spend the whole year making their costumes so they can parade, posture and stage mock battles during Mardi Gras. It's great fun, and while it's a tribute to the Native Americans local blacks identify with as fellow outcasts, the sound is even more Afrocentric than the usual NOLA gumbo — relentlessly percussive, and with coarse, free-form chants for vocals. The results manage to be ominous and exhilarating at the same time. Boudreaux, leader of the most prominent such group remaining, moans and drones and talk-sings his boasts and tall tales. Though a few tracks are more or less conventional "songs," it hardly matters--because the kinetic, hypnotic and overpowering grooves are everything in this music, and these guys serve 'em up with a burbling, swampy undertow.