CAJUN DANCE PARTY are a band who have recently released their debut album which happens to be in my humble opinion one of the best indie debuts of the year so far. This is amazing when you throw into the mix the fact that they are in the course of finishing their A-levels.  Now how can a band this young make one of the most exciting and fresh albums to penetrate your ears this year and yet people much older and “more experienced” and therefore should know better then go on to produce something far worse?

Now I’m not going to just point the finger at ROTARY TEN and their new album because as a whole it is a good piece of work. The guitars are chirpy and the lyrics are memorable. Opening track “Idols of our Own Design” offers the world to the listener, it’s by far the best song on the album, with a crashing opening and a great accumulation of the bands talent seeing the song through to the end. Then things go slightly downhill, however only slightly.

As we work further and further through the album the quality of the songs decreases until we reach “ These Men are Made of Rust”, which picks the whole thing up considerably. Next up is “Action Man” which is a good track boasting a lot of decent qualities especially the chirping, summery riffs, however the song is too short, it doesn’t even reach two and a half minutes.

The concluding song of the album “Don’t Lean on the Wires” is the worst of the bunch. R10 decide to push the boat out with a soulful acoustic sounding track, which isn’t particularly uncommon considering we see adventures like these on a lot of current albums. Unfortunately this band can’t pull it off. The best acoustic tracks make you feel like you are actually watching the band performing in front of you, the atmosphere is extremely personal and it should all revolve around a simple foot tappable riff. “Don’t Lean on the Wires” doesn’t tick any of these boxes for me. The full band makes the song seem overworked and unpersonal, the slow guitars bring the whole mood of the album down as they drone on and on in the background and by the end the listener’s mood has gone from joyful and summery and declined to dull and bored.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

Alex Duncalf

Release Date: 2nd June 2008