Squirrel Nut Zippers: Perennial Favorites : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

It's ironic that much of the wrongly named swing boom follows "Hell," 1996's MTV-approved hit by North Carolina's Squirrel Nut Zippers. To their credit, they're an eccentric band that doesn't aspire to the sunny wisecracks of Swing This, Baby!; if anything, they crave the high-stepping freedom of Louis Armstrong's hot jazz. On Perennial Favorites, the Zippers' third album, they make the jump-blues rhythm only one component of a bunch of disparate stuff they love. They are more like Swing This, Baby!'s best two bands: Florida's Swingerhead -- who have the unusual wit to do "Pick Up the Phone," a Forties swing song about Nineties answering-machine frustrations -- and Massachusetts' Bellevue Cadillac, whose simmering "Black and White" remembers that swing has tone and groove and even some empty space.

The Zippers' leaders, singers Jim Mathus and Katharine Whalen, are meticulous about their sound -- on "Ghost of Stephen Foster," you can hear Andrew Bird draw his bow across his fiddle. On retro amusements like "Suits Are Picking Up the Bill" and ballads of Billie Holiday sadness like "Low Down Man," the band and producer Mike Napolitano ensure that all instruments are allowed to live, breathe and make themselves felt in the mix. They understand that swing is like a well-prepared stew in which you taste all ingredients; they see it as a musical-sonic exploration instead of as this year's lambada. Squirrel Nut Zippers know one thing for sure: It don't mean a thing if it ain't got . . . well, more than zoot suits and stogies. (RS 793)

JAMES HUNTER