A excerpt from “French Rock’n’Roll”
By Geoffrey Himes
Tuesday, February 12, 2013

The quintet’s own album, The Revelers, signals its intentions by reviving three swamp-pop classics: Tommy McLain’s “Jukebox Songs,” Jewel & the Rubies’ “Kidnapper” and McLain’s “I’m Glad for Your Sake (But I’m Sorry for Mine).” The swamp-pop genre is best defined as Cajuns doing Fats Domino songs, and the Revelers capture both halves of that equation perfectly. More impressively, they’ve written eight brand-new swamp-pop songs that boast the same syncopated beat and ear-candy hooks as their models. More impressively still, half of those new songs are sung in French, something the original swamp-pop movement rarely did.

A song like Blake Miller’s “J’Avais l’Habitude” is so punchy and catchy that it proves conclusively how well rock ’n’ roll can work in the French language. Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Francois Hollande the news.