1. Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours (1955)

Track Listing

1. In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning
2. Mood Indigo
3. Glad To Be Unhappy
4. I Get Along Without You Very Well
5. Deep in a Dream
6. I See Your Face Before Me
7. Can't We Be Friends?
8. When Your Lover Has Gone
9. What is This Thing Called Love
10. Last Night When We Were Young
11. I'll Be Around
12. Ill Wind
13. It Never Entered My Mind
14. Dancing On The Ceiling
15. I'll Never Be The Same
16. This Love of Mine

Where else to start but this? To begin this many-album journey, we must jump all the way back to...1955!? Oh no, I've got to make George and Lorraine fall in love at the Enchantment Under The Sea dance before it's too late!!

Speaking of failed romance, boy oh boy is that the theme here. This album was inspired by the recent disintegration of Sinatra's marriage to actress Ava Gardner, and as a result every single song is just about as miserable as it got for 1955. In fact, that's why this album was chosen in the first place! It's perhaps the first successful cohesive album, as a result of all of the songs being specifically chosen and recorded for it. This may sound like a no-brainer to modern audiences, but the album that wasn't a haphazard jumble of singles thrown together was a very rare breed, unless you were one of those pretentious jazz-listening types. But enough of history!

This album is not the Frank Sinatra that you will likely be familiar with, that swingin' ol' lounge singer crooning Fly Me To The Moon, or something like that. This is a lonely, broken, bitter man, and it shows. Heartbreak and reflective, lonely nights alone make up the entire lyrical basis of this album, and Ol' Blue Eyes' usually more chipper voice has become worn down and melancholy. And his voice definitely takes center stage on this album. He ranges from a melodramatic, soaring tone on 'It Never Entered My Mind' to sounding like a bitter shell of a man who's sorry he even bothered with romance in the first place on 'Can't We Be Friends?' (and damn near everywhere else for that matter). The backing orchestration, tastefully arranged by longtime Sinatra collaborator Nelson Riddle, manages to be sparse yet evocative, with the strings rising and falling along with Sinatra. In fact, his arrangements come in danger of being overshadowed by Frank's emotive voice, though he manages to throw in a lot of cool touches. I'm particularly fond of the clarinet in 'What Is This Thing Called Love?'.

One thing that particularly impressed me about the album was the nature of the songwriting. Except for the title track, none of these songs were written for Sinatra to sing (and outside of folk, country, and blues almost nobody sang songs they wrote themselves back then), yet listening to them you wouldn't know it. Frank manages to make every song here sound like he is living through it. Though to be fair, he was.

Overall, I found this album to be more enjoyable than I expected from "an album full of ballads." (though it did drag a bit, as I'm a bit too used to albums with a bit more diversity) Although there is a significant gulf of time separating me and this album, the music is still good, and Frank Sinatra is still as skilled a vocalist here as he ever was. 8/10