Nominated for best traditional jazz album at the 2013 Australian Bell Awards!

Released in February 2012, ‘Enjoy Responsibly’ is Shirazz’s follow-up to the widely acclaimed 2010 album ‘The Window’. It showcases their development over the last couple of years, building on their many festival appearances and long hours of rehearsal.

The tracks you hear on this album have been chosen to highlight Shirazz’s breadth of artistic influence and styles. Louis Armstrong tunes feature prominently: Someday You’ll Be Sorry, Black and Blue and When It’s Sleepy Time Down South are all Armstrong hits. Likewise, Kenny Ball’s arrangements are borrowed and reworked, most notably his arrangement of Bare Necessities but also a little of his version of Someday You’ll Be Sorry.

The band’s light-hearted style of entertainment is exemplified by their innovative versions of pop hits Fat Bottomed Girls and Can’t Buy Me Love, and Matt Dixon’s original lyrics in Dapper Dan. Shirazz write a few of their own tunes too, and Song Sixty-Three (named after page 63 in their music book) is one such attempt, and is also an example of a mixed-style tune; the verse is influenced by New Orleans second-line groove while the chorus is straight ahead trad.

Shirazz embraces other styles as well. Latin-influenced tunes such as Caravan and Can’t Buy Me Love add stylistic variation, and Michael Hanley's ukulele version of I’ll See You In My Dreams provides a welcome change of pace.

It wouldn’t be a Shirazz set without some blisteringly hot choruses here and there, and the hot and fast Darktown Strutters Ball and the screaming clarinet/drum soli (inspired by Goodman/Kruper solos) in Bei Mir Bist Du Schön are two examples.

To take the album out, Junco Partner — a New Orleans street parade standard — sums up what Shirazz is all about: playing great jazz, and having a whole lotta fun doing it.