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Crazy Love - Michael Buble
by paulhanton
Crazy Love
Michael Buble (2009)
Now I like jazz, I like swing, I like the old crooners and Mr Buble is a bit of a modern day incarnation of them all. Coupled with the fact I liked his 'Call me Irresponsible' album, and the fact I got lots of iTunes vouchers for crimbo, I decided to download Mr Buble's latest in it's ... entirety.
Mikey boy sets the tone of this album with the opener, a big band, full on version of the old classic 'cry me a river'. In truth I don't much care for this version, which has a touch of the James Bond theme to it. I didn't much like Justin Trouser snake's version either. To me this should be angst ridden, forced, slow, bare, this aint.
We go on to a couple of other 'standards'. 'All of me', which retains some of the Sintraesque charm, but is a little smooth for me. 'Georgia on my mind', his next offering is much truer to the original though we have this 'Bond' like intro again, why? In fact, his voice is ultra mellow on this track and it really is quite good, a definite keeper on the iPod, nice pianist too.
After these standards he goes on to the title track which is much more contemporary, reminds me a lot of Jason Mraz, that is actually quite a complement as he has gone away from his comfort zone with song and it really sets his vocal range to work, very nice, maybe the best song on the album, as it should be for a title track.
Track 5 is perhaps the most popular track off the album and is, I believe actually in the charts. Along with a 'pop' video in the supermarket he is clearly trying to 'reach out' to a wider audience. It is a 'nice song', a 'nice' video, I hate it.
We then get a departure to a 50's do wop style song mixed with jazz for track 6, oh gosh no, please, what is happening here, it's all going a bit wrong. Can he redeem himself with track 7? No, a Christmas song that is so schmaltzy I nearly vomited.
Track 8 is back to probably what he does/did best, a big band swing number, though it does have more than a hint of rock n roll about it, well it would as the original was much more rock n roll and much less swing. I don't like this either, oh dear It is not going well.
Then he pulls it back by singing a standard again, great vocal, great timing, no Dinah Washington though, better than average, much better than last few songs.
Track 10 is another attempt at being 'popular', he duets here with Sharon Jones (The Dap Kings). In truth, she is a better vocalist than him, on this track at least, she certainly has more 'soul' than he does. I happen to like this tyrack quite a lot, there is a revival in the do wop kinda beat at the mo and this is on that button.
Track 11 starts like a gospel number, could easily be an Elvis intro, he then comes in with a nice soulful vocal, much higher than his normal vocal. This is a big number, a diva number, great song, great music and he pulls it off. Excellent.
Track 12. 'Stardust'. Not for me, a little too pretentious and Crosby like.
Tracks 13 and 14 are 'bonus' tracks, are they a bonus being here? Well, we get a fair dollop of Bossa Nova beat on track 13, so if you like your music smooth, to a Latin beat with a chest full of hair and medallions, this is for you, not for me.
'Some Kind of Wonderful' really isn't, it's some kind of okay, in that 60's do wop way again. The best bit about it is the backing provided by a baritone saxophone.
~~Overall Thoughts~~
I think Buble has lost his way a bit with this album; he is neither the crooner he was on previous albums, nor the populist he is trying to be to fit into that niche currently occupied by people like Jason Mraz.
He needs to decide on 'a' direction for his next album, not a mish mash. He is talented, a great vocalist, get back to that MB.
1. Cry Me a River
2. All of Me
3. Georgia on My Mind
4. Crazy Love
5. Haven't Met You Yet
6. All I Do Is Dream of You
7. Hold On
8. Heartache Tonight
9. You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You
10. Baby (You've Got What It Takes)
11. At This Moment
12. Stardust
13. Whatever It Takes
14. Some Kind of Wonderful
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Crazy Love - Michael Buble
by benlepensive
If all goes according to plan, this man could be about to dethrone Susan Boyle at the top of the UK album charts. He might not have done it for the Christmas week, but Buble shifted about a quarter of a million copies of this album alone last week. Impressive stuff for a guy who used to play in seedy strip clubs!
Buble's ... latest album has broad appeal. It will satisfy those who like stage musicals, there are undertones of jazz, some bluesy numbers and also contemporary pop songs. Housewives adore him, men want to be him because women go crazy over him and well, the bloke can sing really really well. Listening to him live is like listening to the CD.
There are fourteen tracks on here and we kick off with Buble's take on 'Cry Me A River.' Not the Timberlake song, this is far better. A Bond esque orchestra plays underneath while Buble snares the melody with his casual and commanding delivery. A bold and dramatic start to the album.
'All I dream Is Dream Of You' has echoes of Connick Junior and has enough shoo be doo wopping in it to keep you tapping along. A similar style continues in 'All Of You' and you can picture yourself reclining in a jazz lounge while posh ladies walk by with velvet handbags. The title song is one of the least interesting, but delivered with a confidence and showmanship that only he can pull off.
The lead single 'Haven't Met You Yet' is probably as poppy as the album gets. An upbeat and almost jovial melody triumphs at every turn, while Buble laments with overly keen sentiments about love. For something different altogether, 'Baby (You've Got What It Takes)' sees him exploring a soulful groove. The teaming up with Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings is a successful trip, her voice is especially electric and the song sounds like it has been lifted straight from a Broadway musical.
Well produced, memorable tracks and pleasing cover artwork complete one of this year's most satisfying top ten albums.
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Ultra-lounge: On The Rocks, Pt. 1
by hogsflesh
This album will set you back £8 on amazon (available as both a CD and a download). There's also a 'volume two', which is every bit as good.
'Lounge' is used to describe a certain type of old-style easy listening. 'Easy listening' itself is a pejorative term, so I suspect the 'lounge' tag was invented so generation-x types ... could enjoy the music without feeling like they were betraying The Smashing Pumpkins or whoever. Lounge has shifting boundaries -it encompasses 50s/60s exotica and 'space age pop'; it includes languorous Italian soundtracks of the 60s, and even takes in the funkier end of the library music spectrum. But to me, classic lounge is American, the kind of thing you'd expect to hear in a nightclub circa 1959, or playing in the background of a terrible 60s heist movie. It can be instrumental or vocal. It swirls, it blares, and of course it requires no effort whatsoever to listen to.
The main feature of lounge is self-confidence. Coming out of a prosperous America that had won a war, had the Bomb, and was on the verge of conquering space, lounge cheerfully reaffirms what Americans already knew - that they're the best people on earth, that America is the only place to be, and that the music should be as effortless as life itself in the Eisenhower era (assuming you were white and middle class). This is, of course, what early rock 'n' roll was rebelling against, but at this distance (both in terms of time and irony) lounge feels more relevant. I love early rock 'n' roll, but if I had to choose one genre to blast into space to melt the heart of a passing alien warlord, it would be lounge.
This is music created solely to entertain. Words like 'cheesy', 'smarmy' and 'kitsch' are all applicable, but they aren't really insults. Lounge isn't about effort or emotional integrity so much as aspiration towards an idealised lifestyle - comfort, respect; a very middle-aged, white-collar version of cool. The unchallenging nature of the music has meant that a lot of soundtrack music - which after all, has to accompany a film without getting in the way - has been designated 'lounge' in recent years.
I discovered lounge about 12 years ago - I was getting fed up with constantly having Radiohead and The Verve played at me. Music was becoming a never-ending dirge - albums designed to make you miserable, because miserable is 'deep', right? It didn't take long to latch onto the Ultra-Lounge series, if only because there were more of them than in other compilation series. Covering mostly American easy listening from the late 40s to the 70s, they're a treasure trove of old-school cool, music that slides down as effortlessly as the fifth martini of the night; music that pushes gently against you, like a killer dame resting her breasts provocatively on your shoulder as you clean up at the roulette table of your dreams.
While some Ultra-Lounge releases explore the wilder thickets of exotica or space age pop, for the most part if you've heard one you can pretty well guess what the others are going to be like. So it's a bit tricky choosing one to review, as what I've written above is true for all of them. On The Rocks is probably the one that contains the highest number of familiar tunes. These are lounge covers of rock hits, mostly from the 60s. These versions treat rock as another stop on the exotica trail for blue-rinse, jogging-suit Vegas tourists, just like the way Martin Denny or Yma Sumac brought a little bit of Pacific island life to one's living room, but watered down and melodied up. These covers completely miss the point of the originals by stripping away anything subversive, sexual or druggy, and turning them into lift music.
Which is brilliant. Most of these are songs I like, but somehow having them neutered and wrapped in a smoking jacket before being played at the wrong tempo for a different audience just makes them better. You'd expect lounge crooners and kitsch band leaders to be nervous or even resentful of the music that was edging them out, but they take it on with their usual unshakeable self-belief.
A track-by-track listing would be beside the point. A few highlights will suffice. Martin Denny gives us a version of Strawberry Alarm Clock's 'Incense and Peppermints' that contains a slightly awkward mix of flute and sitars. In its dreamier moments it sounds like the kind of music that would play while you watched naked Pacific island girls bathing in a lagoon. Sir Julian gives us a strangely thoughtful Hammond organ and snare-drum take on The Lemon Pipers' 'Green Tambourine'. It could easily be the soundtrack to a casino scene in a terrible Bond spoof. Stu Philips' mostly-instrumental cover of The Kinks' 'Tired of Waiting For You' is a great deal more soporific than the original, with dreamy vocals coming in over the choruses. It turns it from a song of sexual frustration into one of simple laziness.
The Hollyridge Strings make 'Heartbreak Hotel' into a sinister piece of private-eye stalking music before morphing it into an ebullient rendition of 'Don't Be Cruel'. The New Classic Singers do a wordless dah-dah-dah-dah-dum version of 'As Tears Go By' which is quite lovely, and again, belongs in a terrible Bond spoof, perhaps accompanying a romantic interlude next to a lake. The Lettermen do a fab, soft vocal medley of The Doors' 'Hello I Love You' and 'Touch Me', which is both charming, and hilarious. (The humour comes from imagining Jim Morrison's face darkening with fury on hearing it, and then doubtless ranting drunkenly about dead indians and getting his knob out.)
There are a few misconceived tracks. 'Winchester Cathedral' and 'Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes' are close enough to easy listening in their original versions that lounge covers seem redundant. But there's still gold to be mined as we move towards the album's close. Julie London is perhaps the ultimate lounge singer, and has one of the sexiest voices ever. Her cover of 'The Mighty Quinn' is wrong in quite the most charming way you can imagine. Lord Sitar, a perennial of these types of compilation, brings some much-needed eastern mysticism to The Monkees' 'Daydream Believer'. John Andrew Tartaglia's orchestral/moog/sax medley of 'A Day in the Life' and 'I Am The Walrus' turns the tired old Beatles hits into an epic journey into outer space. The album ends with a charming and oddly melancholy trumpet rendition of 'Aquarius' and 'Let The Sun Shine In' from Hair.
If you're the kind of person who still shakes your head in disgust at the idea that Englebert Humperdinck kept 'Strawberry Fields Forever' off the number one spot 40 years ago, you should stay away. Have fun in your humourless little bubble, loser! There is, of course, room for many different types of music in one's heart, and to hate Ultra-Lounge is to hate life itself. There are about 40 Ultra-Lounge albums in total, including their solo artist compilations and recent download releases. To own one is to want to own them all. You need this stuff in your life.
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