Just the mention of both New Orleans and Cuba in the same sentence brings on involuntary bodily movements, which start at the shoulders and soon find their way down to the feet. Kat Danser pitches things just right from the start on her new album One Eye Open, with a brassy intro that invites us to the dance, while at the same time effectively setting out her stall; that she is ‘a lover, an all nighter, the fuel in a butane lighter’, which comes over loud and clear in her confident vocal delivery. Backing up this confidence are a bunch of musicians who appear to relish in the party atmosphere, albeit from an unfortunate distance, the album having been produced in lockdown. The late night blues vibe of “Lonely and the Dragon”, sounds for all it’s social distanced perseverance, a tightly knit band effort, with ghostly organ and guitar interplay, both electric and acoustic, courtesy of Kevin McKendree and Steve Dawson respectively, with an empathetic horn section and the informed rhythm section of Gary Craig and Jeremy Holmes, who hold things together perfectly. Kat takes giant strides between genres, notably midway through the album, where she jumps from the gospel tones of Rhiannon Giddens on “Get Right Church” to the sheer post punk Patti Smithness of “One Eye Closed”, which not only sound like they belong to completely different albums, but could also be delivered by two completely different singers. If “One Eye Closed” might be a little out of Kat’s comfort zone, then her take on Gus Cannon’s “Bring It With You When You Come”, places her right there in the middle of it and wrapped in a blanket to boot, a performance that doesn’t only echo the popular songs of the 1920s, but also plays to the same homage bracket as Ry Cooder’s mid 1970s Jazz album. We need albums like One Eye Open, especially numbers like “Frenchman Street Shake” and “MI Corazon”, if only to remind us that life is good, despite the frequency of seismic interruptions.