This album is the ultimate in comfort music. When your lonely, destitute, world-weary, put on this cd and you'll have a buddy. Frank Sinatra's all-knowing voice on this, surely a landmark album in the history of popular music, is breathtaking. Understated, weary yet subtly powerful, his performances on my favourite tracks "Glad To Be Unhappy" and "I'll Be Around" are spellbinding. These tracks have a musical accompaniment of only piano, bass, guitar, drums and xylophone. This is where Sinatra's voice is most at home and where he is most able to communicate his regrets, wishes and desperation. Nelson Riddle paints a beautiful landscape with his haunting arrangments. I sometimes think that the violins heard in most of these songs, are made of heart strings, such is the emotiveness of the music. Again as in the majority of Sinatra's Capitol repotoire, most songs heil from the songwriting hayday of the 1920's - 1940's. Songs that might have sounded rather bland originally, but here are fully restored their intended beauty in the capable hands of Sinatra/Riddle.
This album can seem a little intense to the novice Sinatra fan, but it will grow on you, as it did to myself.
Definitely a must-buy album, and if liked, you must also purchase "No One Cares" and "Only the Lonely" to help complete the set of classic sad Sinatra "concepts".