Genially

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Ambition got the better of Brad Paisley on 2013's Wheelhouse, coaxing him into the briar patch that was "Accidental Racist" an ill-conceived cross-cultural duet with LLCool J which generated a flurry of headlines that camouflaged how the album straight-up flopped on country radio. Wheelhouse was Paisley's first record since Play not to go gold, and even that is misleading because that 2008 effort was an instrumental album and those never sell in large numbers; subtract that from his stats and the 2013 record achieves the ignoble status of his first-ever album not to reach gold and, perhaps more importantly, his first not to generate a number one single.

Hailing from Sweden, the Radio Dept. is one of Scandinavia’s finest indie-rock bands. Collection includes: Lesser Matters (2003); Pet Grief (2006); Clinging to a Scheme (2010).

Alongside its ongoing and much lauded Haydn and Schubert series, both on-stage and on-record, the Doric String Quartet with this Mendelssohn album is adding a new milestone in its repertoire.

Good products are worth their weight in gold when times are a little harsh – and this album was certainly a genially placed stopgap. In 1959, at the time when RCA launched this record on the market, the label’s shining rock star was out of the country doing his military service in good old Germany. In order to comfort all his fans during his forced absence, the record bosses produced an album with a smartly uniformed Elvis on the cover, smiling widely to let his faithful followers know that he’d be back soon. There was a special calendar too, so that his fans could count off the days until his return. This marketing ploy was extremely successful. The record became a highly desirable collector’s item and even years later illegal dollars still flowed from pirate copies.

In 1955, Louis Armstrong, along with vocalist Velma Middleton, got into the studio to pay tribute to the late Fats Waller. All the standards are here: "Honeysuckle Rose," "Squeeze Me," "Ain't Misbehavin," rendered in fine and mellow but gently, genially swinging fashion. Armstrong's trumpet is superb and his voice carries the good-time spirit of Waller's music.

Following the release of Eric Chenaux’s last album Say Laura (2022), The Guardian wrote “the Canadian songwriter has one of the all-time great singing voices in popular music, an intensely romantic Chet Baker-ish instrument that seems to float with piercing direction, like a paper aeroplane thrown hard through mist.” With Uncut describing his songcraft “as delicate and lovely as a rare orchid” and Record Collector praising the album’s “sublime alien balladry” such are the accolades that have accrued to Chenaux’s unique and consummately uncompromising solo music for well over a decade now.

Cal Tjader's era-defining mixture of Afro-Cuban rhythms and mainstream jazz solos undergoes a bit of a horizontal expansion in these 1956 sessions. The tracks are often longer than on previous albums, finally taking advantage of the logistics of the LP, and as a result, both the Latin and jazz elements benefit. Tenor saxophonist Brew Moore gets extended chances to blow in an easy-grooving Getz-like manner on several tracks, and on "I Love Paris," Luis Miranda (congas) and Bayardo Velarde (timbales) engage in some spirited percussion battles over the vamping of the brothers Duran (Manuel on piano and Carlos on bass). Everything cooks in a bright yet disciplined manner, and Tjader's elliptical, swinging vibes preside genially over the ensemble.