"Vavoom!"
The Brian Setzer Orchestra,
2000
"Vavoom!" is the forth release from
the Brain Setzer Orchestra, and is to "The Dirty Boogie"
what "Led Zeppelin IV " was to "Led Zeppelin III."
It's an album that tightened up what needed to be tightened, polished up
what needed polish, and it comes off with renewed energy and incredible
drive. With "The Dirty Boogie," Setzer showed
he was the king of the retro-swing movement with his smoking cover of Louis
Prima's "Jump Jive An' Wail." Well, the retro-swing movement might
have cooled off a bit, but Setzer hasn't. This album is a
mix of six jazz/swing covers and eight originals. Now usually when an artist
put covers on an album, they stick out (and sometime outshine) the original
material. That isn't the case here. Even though some of these songs are
fifty-plus years old, Setzer injects them with his own brand
of timeless greaser hip-ness and molds them into something that will last
another fifty or a hundred-and-fifty years. Many wrote off Setzer
after his stint in 1980's phenom rockabilly-pop outfit The Stray
Cats (arguably the most successful rockabilly band ever), but he
matured as an artists, focused himself, and is now making some of the best
rock/pop/swing around. Even when a song on "Vavoom!" clunks
a bit (like the tepid version of "Caravan") it's still better than what
most current jump/swing bands could do. One warning--this is a high energy
album. You might want to keep it away from your prized ultra-mellow Jackie
Gleason Orchestra albums. The proximity to this fireball might
set The Great One's cocktails on fire. (And as a side note,
the album's artwork is done by no one other than the tiki/lounge/hipster
artist de jour Shag.)
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