All Things Swamp — Dressed

NO BEER RUN REQUIRED.

Dressed comes with more than enough of its own intoxicating spirit and boozy wobble. It’s simply the nature of the beast: The beast being a platoon of syncopated merrymakers who convened just for the funk of it. The Bourbon Street funk of it, to be geographically precise. Because these nine men are hellbent on rekindling the glorious cacophony of New Orleans brass bands: the keg party of Louisianan music.

A tuba, chubby as ever, waddles into your ear from out of the black background. And that is how we meet All Things Swamp for the very first time. Immediately, a sly, snappy drum-and-cymbal escort arrives. Before long, the door busts open and the rest of the gang piles in, parading through the room in a grand “Sidewalk Strut.”

At that point—20 seconds into their debut album’s opening cut—the full rumpus is on.

By the time the one-minute mark hits, someone evidently flicks a lit match into a case of bottle rockets, igniting instruments to independently fire off in a display of beautiful chaos. Some shoot skyward; some hug the ground; others whizz in and out of the space between. Soon enough, though, everyone tightens back up to fly the song’s main hook in tight formation before rounds of solos kick in. This is but one of the setlist’s eight roly-poly grooves that expand and contract at will.

The special ad hoc experience consolidated into All Things Swamp floods the airspace (as well as bandstands) with their menagerie of trumpet, trombone, bass trombone, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, piano, guitar, Hammond B3 organ, drums. And that tuba of Luke Kirley, Swamp’s kingpin, whose deep blurts excavate the kind of trenches that put bassists out of work. If you’ve heard Robert Cray’s Midnight Stroll, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Alanis Morissette’s Under Rug Swept, Steely Dan’s Aja, Bob Weir’s Live in Colorado, or even the main theme to TV’s The Office with its lead-in piano stumble, then you’ve already met some of the band.

These are New Orleans-minded musicians from California, who bring to this style of music a sense of devoted infatuation spiked with enough mischievous command to transform material from sources as far-flung as the Jackson Five (Motown’s hitmakers) to Hoagy Carmichael (one of the fathers of the Great American Songbook) to Big Sam’s Funky Nation (self-explanatory). Plus, so satisfying is their synchronized free-for-all that not a word gets spoken for the first 18 minutes. Not until “Rocking Chair,” the fifth track, does a perfectly parched voice rasp out those classic lyrics about time marching on while brushed drums shepherd along a lazy tempo. These four silky minutes serve as a momentary respite from all the surrounding commotion. “How Much Fun,” with its frisky Dr. John-like vocals, is the only other piece that gets sung.

Now massively bulked up, “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” remains every bit the catchy earworm as back when saxophonist Cannonball Adderley rode the hit up the Billboard chart in 1967. “Dancing Machine” likewise receives a new, earthier persona compared to when Michael and brother Jermaine Jackson sang up a storm atop Dean Parks’ guitarwork at the original 1973 session. Parks, by the way, doubles as Swamp’s fretsman as well as tenor saxophonist. Those are his extra-slinky guitar squiggles stacked up against Jim Pugh’s sweaty B3 wails that grease “Bah-Duey-Duey,” a serious slab of funk. Not that “Blues for Ben” is any less greasy. Except that, after delivering the series of descendingly stepped riffs, the horns stick around as the ones doing the soloing.

And all this sudsy euphoria leaves no hangover.

Label: Little Village Foundation

Release date: 8/10/25

Label website: All Things Swamp

Reviewed by Dennis Rozanski