Dirty Little Secret
After fronting the Squirrel Nut Zippers in the nineties, Katherine Whalen took a turn exploring other genre specific music. With a jazz band, Katherine Whalen's Jazz Squad, she cast herself as a torchy chanteuse, garnering praise, but not a clear sense of her own direction. Now, after a seven year hiatus, she's come back having found her own contemporary voice. From the feverish rhythms of "The Funnest Game" to the majestic Brian Wilson-like title track, the set moves with ease between contrasting settings and styles. And far from making this a disjointed whole, it's Whalen's singing and the sympathetic arrangements by producer David Sale (who also played all of the instruments) that tie the whole thing together. The disc's variety is one of its strengths. Her voice can is as adept fronting a funky number like "You-Who" as it is on the dreamscape lullaby "Blur."--David Greenberger