New Releases Spotlight: Week of December 1, 2014

Happy December!  This week in the new releases section of the Music Lounge, we’ve got a couple of great local singers to tell you about and with Christmas around the corner, a really nice seasonal disc from Joey DeFrancesco.

Elaine Dame - You're My Thrill
First off, Elaine Dame.  Her new album, You’re My Thrill is exactly what you’d expect from a consummate pro here in Chicago.  The sidemen are a who’s who of top notch players in town (Dennis Luxion, Jim Cox, Jon Deitemeyer and Art Davis among them), and the arrangements are refreshingly well thought out.  There’s a lot to like here, from a rather grooving take on "You’re My Thrill" to a really nice run through "I Was Doing All Right."

 

Rose Colella - Cocktail
Another one of Chicago’s premier vocalists, Rose Colella also has a new disc out called Cocktail.  Expanding on her last disc, The Small Hours, the band is bigger, the songs are more fleshed out, and Rose herself sounds a little more willing to belt it out.  The net result is a gorgeously atmospheric disc that evokes the very drinks at the bar that Cocktail that the name implies.

 

Joey DeFrancesco - Home for the Holidays
Finally, Joey DeFrancesco has a new two disc set out called Home for the Holidays.  There are definitely a few tips of the hat to Jimmy Smith’s Christmas Cookin' throughout the album, and it also features a couple of Chicagoans on hand for the proceedings in Jeff Parker and George Fludas.  The discs are divided into “The Party” and “The Tradition” but really, this whole set is pretty much ready to party.  "Joy To The World" gets swung, "The Twelve Days of Christmas" gets a cool Latin treatment and he even jumps to the piano for a few tunes, too.  Something tells me you’ll be hearing a lot of this one this month.

You’ll hear these and a bunch of other great new music all week long on WDCB, so stay tuned in at 90.9FM, WDCB.org, and via cable TV in Chicago on CAN TV42, and I’ll see you next week!