Martin Holman

They look aged nineteen and sing the music of their parents' generation; no, of their grandparents'. What's more, they actually are aged about 19 - but sound older. Jamie Cullum, at 23 (as writers never tire of reminding us), is the senior citizen in the posse and experience has already coarsened his voice and wizened his choice of material. Bublé, by comparison, is liquid silk. A very nice voice that can give you "Fever" or "Summer Wind" or a "Crazy little thing called love". The selection terminates with Bob Haymes's touching '40s melody "That's all", and somehow, you don't think it will be.

And, somehow, you think you've heard it all before. Now, you don't get that with Cullum. He might do "Singin' in the rain" on his latest release, but it's a song that Cullum has rethought, recast and taken away from the MGM backlot and all that warm milk that Kelly had to dance through, and brought it to a street near you where people are shopping and half the pavement is up for roadworks by navvies you never see. In other words, he's tried to personalise it. Taking advantage of new century recording pizzazz, Bublé none the less slips back two, three, five decades with a smoothness that suggests pastiche more than reverence. Indeed, "Come fly with me" opens with the whoosh of strings and brass, and stays on the flight path of Sinatra's own world-famous version by Billy May. Why? Ditto, Sinatra's handling of "For once in my life" to Costa's arrangement. It's here. With some anxiety, I awaited "Put your head on my shoulder", a song made sadly famous by Paul Anka, when I read that Buble's album was produced by - Paul Anka. ("That's all", by the way, also appears to be a pleasing retread of Mel Tormé's lovely Columbia recording from the 1960s on the eponymous LP.)

As a debut, this dependence on forerunners has its place. It locates Bublé as an easy-listening vocalist. It taps him into two lucrative markets - the twenty- & thirtysomethings whose lounge tastes have brought them into this kind of music for the first time, and those same listeners’ greyer seniors who want to hear it again, this time by new voices. The air-play and, in the UK, accolades on Radio 2 suggest those targets have been hit. The pity is that Bublé has the pipes that can make it for him on his own, without this help. Cullum has, so far, managed to stay himself - even become more so, on the evidence of "Twentysomething". Buble perhaps has yet to discover who his own self is. This album doesn't show us. But he really does sound good behind the packaging. I don't think he'll follow this path again; at least, I hope he won't. That's all; but just for now.

One reason has to be the ethereal quality of Fleurine's voice. It floats more than it asserts, and that tentative quality is not everyone's preference in a singer. What she does with it, however, is a searching of the melody that is more about sound and creativity than it is about meaning in the lyric. For all of her use of words - and there are lots of words on this CD, and in three languages - her articulacy lies in instrumental ideas rather than vocal refinement.

So in that sense alone she is well matched with Brad Mehldau. His playing - and also his arrangements - are so intelligent they are thrilling without displaying their intelligence. Take, for instance, "The logical song". It is set in 5/7, has a slightly faltering and self-conscious rhythm in the solo that magnificently suits this astonishing Supertramp song about the conflict between nature and convention. Hear how Mehldau deploys strings, underscoring the lyric and also sounding "new" in a jazz context. On the reprise chorus it has both players pushing the song into uncomfortable areas, fleetingly, temptingly and, I think, refreshingly to reveal how good a tune this is. It's not easy, and it sets the scene for the following tracks. Stop, listen - it's foreground stuff amd not background music.

The credits span Mehldau and Fleurine to Jobim/Mendoca, Legrand, Mandel and Metheny, but the abiding memory is her bossa numbers in Portuguese - both Jobim covers and self-penned originals. She handles the idiom calmly. If there is one criticism it is a sameness about several tracks that has them blending into one in the mind. But the recording has its groove, and given a chance, its one the listener falls in with, and then wants more.

There have been better days, 1 Mar 2003

My verdict is that his is a fair to middling stab, overcoming my initial deep misgivings. You see, I first sampled "I Remember You", a beautiful melody which here is a dreadful track. It displays one shortcoming of this selection, namely that George and his co-producer, Phil Ramone, can view music from the past as a period piece, requiring lush arrangements from a bygone age: there's a harp on this track, for goodness sake. In his liner notes, Ramone writes "The song is the survivor". Not here, Phil: it sank in treacle.

Another flaw in their treatment is evident in "My Baby Just Cares For Me"; dating from 1930, it is the oldest song from the last century on the album. The best-known version is Nina Simone's arrangement of a quarter-century later: audiences in clubs clamour for it. And George Michael obliges, as if this Walter Donaldson melody cannot be done any other way. (In fact, it is written with a natural swing feel, rather than Simone's famous clompy rythym.) The same goes for "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" where George sticks close by Roberta Flack's seminal reading rather than looking afresh at Euan MacColl's folk original. And Simone is the source again for "Wild is the Wind". Just be grateful, however, that he steered away from the siren-call of Frank Ifield's 1962 take on "I Remember You". The first song in Britain to sell a million copies, it yodelled Mercer's lyric straight on to the rocks of a Tyrolese nightmare.

None of this detracts from the quality of either singing or instrumentation. The adjective "nice" applies itself quite naturally to many tracks. George's tenor voice is appealing, disciplined, and his phrasing - crucial in this kind of material - is quite interesting. But revelation there is none: he hasn't really seen anything new in these songs. Although they stretch from the 1930s to the 90s, only with the two most recent tunes, "Roxanne" and "Ms Sarajevo", does George feel able to pull away into something a bit novel. "Roxanne" becomes a medium swing number, and the musical intelligence that could have done so much elsewhere, presents this Police number very nicely.

The recent forays into the Great American Songbook by artists as different as Rod Stewart and Kiri te Kanawa reflect its enduring appeal among musicians. But the commercial success of Norah Jones and Eva Cassidy with modern songs in the spirit of standards shows not only that the public retains an appetite for well-crafted songs. It also shows that the quality lies in the way they are handled, not in the concept. On this hoary old route into the past, the market rewards the artist who takes the path less travelled. George Michael et al, take note.

Scott's day has come, 10 Feb 2003

For me, "The Source" outranks for quality "Falling in Love is Wonderful", the record from 1962 in which Scott invested so much and which was kept from the shops by a legal wrangle with a former producer. (The story sounds like a songline itself.) That album has been given much critical attention as it now finally makes the record-stands, but the album which really runs Sinatra's ballad recordings on Capitol a close race is this one. The production is better than Scott's earlier album, and against a more minimal orchestral setting than Ray Charles provided in 1962, Scott's extraordinary, seering, visceral voice soars. There are also at least two "Desert Island" tracks - interpretations that just leave all the others in the shadows. One is "Our Day will Come", and the other is a truly magnificent, haunting "Day by Day". "Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child" is a standard in Scott's repertoire, and "On Broadway" is at a tempo that really gives that song an edgy, downtown feel.

And as if Scott was always conscious of rivalling Sinatra, the last track is "This Love of Mine", one of the handful of songs that Sinatra actually helped to write. Frankly, this album is one of the best jazz vocal recordings you will buy.

The reason is simple. The songs are exceptionally good; the musicians work together seamlessly; and the singer is tip-top. Ian Shaw is Britain's jazz vocalist of the moment, yet this is not really what purists call a jazz recording. The material comes from Ricki Lee Jones, Stevie Wonder, Judie Tzuki and Joni Mitchell, to name just four authors among the ten tracks. But neither is it pop, rock or blues. An album of this quality shows up the inadequacy, the pointlessness, of labels.

It is an album that just needs to be heard. Shaw started his career as a kind of rock singer, and having moved his repertoire jazz-ward under the influence of Ronnie Scott, swept through a lot of choice material on his journey. What this produced was a musician with a special ear for a good song, a well-written lyric and a story worth remembering. Which is why "Pretending to Care", Todd Rundgren's supreme ballad on the fickleness of affection, remains in Shaw's song-list for a gig at London's 606, Vortex or at Ronnie Scott's club. It is also the best thing on this album. Shaw has pared down his phrasing to huge emotional effect, displaying the sheer sophistication of his technique. Meanwhile, Paul Stacey on guitar matches him for elegance and feeling, and the other instrumentalists (Mark Fletcher with brushes and Geoff Gascoyne on bass) are just beautiful behind. But to single out any track as the best is almost a travesty. Listen to Mitchell's "This Flight Tonight" or Arlen & Koehler's "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea", and they vie for this top spot (and, again, great work by Stacey on the second of these sides).

And the genius of the record is the way gems shine, like Lennon & McCartney's "Step inside Love". Once Cilla Black's television theme song, and now, I'm pleased to report, fully recovered.

You have been warned.