Le Cowboy Creole

Veteran zydeco (a musician of Creole-African-American-Francophone heritage) star Delafose, who began playing with his father's band at age seven, really is a cowboy--with a working ranch in Eunice, Louisiana, where he gets his hands dirty raising horses and livestock. He is also an accordionist of unusually fierce rhythmic power, with a soulful, keening voice that cuts to the quick of every song he sings. His personal synthesis of French and African-based influences, highly syncopated and incorporating deep internal rumbles of R&B and raucous rock guitars, is at once mellow, earthy, sassy, and compulsively danceable--it's a totally masculine groove, even in moments of tenderness and introspection. The present album offers wide-ranging series of tracks, chugging, shimmying classics and self-penned compositions that are redolent of spicy cuisines, sticky, too-close dancing, and humid, beer-soaked nights that don't always end with sunrise. The set list also includes sweetly harmonized interpretations of Chuck Berry's "Promised Land," Lionel Richie's "Easy," Van Morrison's "Domino," and Phil Everly's "When Will I Be Loved." Inevitably, some of these are more successful than others; the latter two get with the program big-time while the others sound perhaps a trifle wan and anemic but not exactly out-of-place. -Christina Roden