Album Review: Lowdown Hokum Orchestra - That's Showbiz

With lines like "You only love me for my lunchbox", it's hard not to smile to Lowdown Hokum Orchestra's instantly likable latest.

Melbourne's hokum specialists pair burlesque sass and with a band of five that know their way around banjos, beats and fiddles. Singer and banjo plucker Doc White has a firm hand on the rudder of this potentially unwieldly ship, keeping Monkey Rag's ragtime frivolities in check alongside Nichaud Fitzgibbon's sultry pouts, at its finest on If You Want Me To Love You and lauding the 1920s speakeasy vibe in I Got My Mojo Working.