Squeezebox

"You may feel the mood drifts from Enlightenment Vienna to French café culture in the cadenzas but Haydn left none of his own, and Chassot makes ingenious use of the prevailing motifs in her creations. I’m glad to have heard this; and if hearing Haydn’s concertos on the squeezebox would make your life complete, you’ll not find a better disc"

On his second release as A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeremy Barnes continues to play the antique card, now focusing on the "ompah" accordion sound of an 18th century European village, as opposed to the Reconstruction-era American village of his previous effort. Of course, just because Barnes evokes a certain time and place doesn't mean his hectic musical ear stays in that one place, hence the squeezebox that morphs into a battery of bagpipes on the highly cinematic opener, "Laughter in the Dark." There's also room for a prideful horn that echoes the work of Ennio Morricone and the constant pitter-patter of castanets and marching snares that ensure that the solemn moments like "For Slavoj" and "Europa" don't stay that way for too long.

Singing trombonist Jack Teagarden came up in the jazz and dance bands of his native Texas and the surrounding territories. By the end of the '20s he was making noise with the Eddie Condon mob in New York City, where the South-and-Midwesterners quickly learned that authentic, New Orleans-Chicago-styled jazz could be performed in public if you didn't need to eat more than one meal per day. The paying gigs were with society dance bands, and Teagarden made ends meet during the first half of 1930 by serving in the brass sections of orchestras under the direction of Ben Selvin and Sam Lanin, as well as the toothpowder and toothpaste-affiliated Ipana Troubadours. This type of economic problem solving would lead to his being contractually tethered to the Paul Whiteman Orchestra during the years 1933-1939. In 2006, the Jazz Oracle label released a thrilling 25-track collection of recordings that document Teagarden's professional activity during the first grueling months of the Great Depression.