On the Dancefloor

This is a super-tight Latvian acoustic dance band whose sets range from Talking Heads and Neil Young covers to a revved-up African-American spiritual and a Bob Wills country chestnut. The core of their repertoire is bluegrass fused with Latvian folk songs and polkas, with a spritz of klezmer for good measure. A decade on from their formation, their third album is a lively hoedown, recorded with an enthusiastic crowd at an old mansion in Riga. It’s a tribute to dance traditions from around the world, including an English two-step, a French bourrée and the Australian sheep shearing song ‘Lachlan Tigers’, based on a Scottish air and sung by the group’s Aussie saxophonist. The instrumental half of the setlist is the most appealing, as the other male vocalist can be a bit hammy, delivering American tunes in a raspy, exaggerated accent. The live gig gets better as it goes along, with the band sizzling on the last three instrumentals, culminating in the totally irresistible ‘Mūžīgi polkas (Polka 4 ever)’.