There's something about eating a grilled cheese sandwich along with a mug of soup while a fire roars in some fireplace somewhere and the rain and snow falls outside your southern New England home. I saw this in a commercial once. I do it myself when I can, usually in other peoples' homes while they're away. Sometimes the houses are ranch style, sometimes they're Cape Cods. I personally prefer the Cape Cods. But either way, it all comes down to the grilled cheese. A food unlike any other, the grilled cheese is bland and simple, yet brings out a ravenous cartoon- like monster in me every time I get ready to eat it.

Standard jazz vocals are not much like Cape Cods and ravenous cartoons. They are, however, on the same curling team as grilled cheese. They warm the heart with a comforting sense of deja vu-- I've been there and I'm happy to be back. On her first solo album, Katharine Whalen of the Squirrel Nut Zippers invites herself in while you're eating that grilled cheese sandwich. She sits down at the table and starts nibbling at bits of your food, finishing the crust before you even notice she's there. At least, I didn't notice. After a few more bites, you realize she has a Jazz Squad with her. Isn't that Jim Mathus over there? And Stuart Cole? Ahh, it's hard to stray too far from the Zippers flock, especially when you are married to one of the guys in the band.

Between bites of my sandwich and spoonfuls of my soup, Katherine and the band take some songs out of their pockets and place them on the table. "Sugar," a tin wind- up New Orleans streetcar, wheels about for a bit until its spring winds down. The scene in the "Deed I Do" snow globe is a small plastic tree with a snowman leaning against it. Katharine shakes it up, setting Robert Griffin in motion on piano as the plastic snow confetti rains down about the tree.

Eleven of the twelve songs are favorite standards picked by Katharine (with that odd one being an original instrumental). I can see why she likes 'em. They settle into a chair in the back and, in some way, complete the room. They're the grilled cheese after shoveling the driveway. Maybe more like grilled cheese with tomato, using cheddar and jack cheeses. The Squad livens each song up by actually playing as if they just wrote them-- the songs could very well be theirs (one would think so from the effort they give). And instead of being long, drawn- out and overly spastic, the solos are short and to the point.

So I'm glad that I can still get grilled cheese in a diner (or someone else's Cape Cod- style house). And I'm glad that someone who has taken much from the past in terms of music has paid it a tribute here, and gone a step further by actually doing it well.

-Chip Chanko