Interview Looking back on Cajun Dance Party’s ‘The Colourful Life’

Floppy-fringed, and in the midst of sitting their GCSEs, Cajun Dance Party originally started out as an after-school rabble; writing skippingly charming songs about digestive enzymes, pizza, and Wrigley’s gum. A split-second later, they were sixth formers, and the band had been signed by XL for a reportedly astronomical sum. Recording their debut album with Suede’s former guitarist Bernard Butler manning the production desk, and with the run of Edwyn Collins’ taxidermy filled studio and guitar collection, Cajun Dance Party were kids set loose in a musical candy shop, with the keys to every dispenser, and the code to the till.

“I think I saw recording the album as a fun after-school club, essentially,” laughs Max Bloom, speaking to DIY eight years on from ‘The Colourful Life’. These days, of course, he’s best known for fronting Yuck. “I was not aware of the fact this was actually a big deal,” Max admits. “We were getting to record an album! It took me two days to record my bass parts, but I would just hang out [at West Heath Yard, where they worked with producer Bernard Butler] anyway, and smoke weed on the roof. I’d always been in school bands, but then suddenly this school band started getting taken seriously.”

Though Cajun Dance Party were young, flippant, and - in Max Bloom’s own words - a “little bit silly”, the exciting, unbounded, and sometimes all-over-the-shop energy of five musicians’ first steps power ‘The Colourful Life’. The band’s Robbie Stern, an accomplished classical violinist (and “easily the most talented person in that band,” according to Bloom) weaves theatrical string-hums through the awkward, foot-scuffing ‘No Joanna’. “Look down at my shoes to see how I move / And it’s always wrong, it’s always wrong,” despairs Daniel Blumberg, clumsily overthinking a crush, and spilling out lyrics straight from an angsty, scrawled-on diary.