Bob Dylan releases another album of Frank Sinatra songs

VETERAN singer/songwriter Bob Dylan has released another album of songs from the Great American Songbook, 'Fallen Angels'. Read a review in Mojo magazine, "Following 'Shadows In The Night', 'Fallen Angels'' 12 songs are the second batch from the 23 recorded in Hollywood's famed Capitol Records' Studio B in 2014. All but Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer's 'Skylark' were recorded by Sinatra; some songs famously, like 'Young At Heart', others like 'On A Little Street In Singapore', less so. As a singer, Dillon is no Sinatra of course, carefully tracking as best he can at his age this repertoire's melodic contours, with expressive phrasing a lesser priority, in contrast to the liberties he takes on his own less melodically intricate songs. Nor is Dylan a Sinatra as a stylist. When Sinatra sang Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar's 1931 song "Never The Less" it was already a moon-June period piece, but Nelson Riddle's swinging brass arrangement gave it urbanity, oomph and sex, while in 1962 Kay Starr also endows it with carnal yearning. Dylan's rather sleepy version cleaves far closer to Sinatra's fellow Rat Packer Dean Martin's 1957 account, rootsy-tootsiness and all."