Cracker Plays the Accordion Card

I've always liked Cracker's smart rock tunes, dosed, as they always are, with a buckshot country vibe and a pound and a half each of humor, attitude and salty observation. Now the band's released an album, Greatest Hits –- Redux, with all the songs re-recorded and reworked, with a heavy lash of accordion added for good measure, according to a rave review by Mary Beth Hascall at PLAYBACK:stl.

Apparently Cracker pulled together the record -- with the squeezebox injection courtesy of Kenny Margolis -- at least in part to stick it to former label Virgin Records, which is releasing its own greatest hits package. (Redux also undercuts the Virgin disc's price.) Can't wait to hear this one.