La Bottine Souriante

Choose a Celtic style - British Isles, Irish, French, Cape Breton, Quebecois - and then add to it a brass quartet and you essentially have La Bottine Souriante. The nine-piece Quebec band has 25 years under its belt and on Dance With LBS, their 11th album, these Juno recipients make body movement a priority. The 17 tracks are mostly upbeat instrumentals and they swing like a greased pendulum. LBS take traditional fiddle and accordion music to places its instigators never dreamed of going. When Jean Frechette crashes into a reel like "Acadian Girl" or "R &C" with a sumptuous sax solo, the rules all of the sudden are altered and words like jazz and folk get jumbled and lost. This is sidewalk Dixieland meets backwoods Gatineau, and surprisingly it always sounds natural.