Wonderful World (Ms) (Sl) (Tony Bennett)
from Sony
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Binding/Format: Audio CD
Release Date: 11/02/2003
Index: Music
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Music Pod Price: £59.99
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Never mind the project's odd couple, "He's got a girlfriend; so does she" marketing shuck. A Wonderful World is a musical love affair in all its splendour. Produced by the seemingly chameleonic producer T Bone Burnett (who previously revived traditional bluegrass with spectacular success on O Brother, Where Art Thou?), the septuagenarian legend Tony Bennett and his unlikely contemporary foil KD Lang affectionately court a dozen songs from the Louis Armstrong repertoire with the warmth and natural grace that have been a deceptively effortless Bennett trademark for 50-plus years. The pair kick proceedings off with a playful, irony-free "Exactly Like You", then perform a tender vocal waltz across both the ages and the masterful, sympathetic orchestrations of the late Peter Matz, one of Bennett's longtime collaborators. But it's on the more melancholy performances, like "If We Never Meet Again", "I'm Confessin'" and the Armstrong perennials "Wonderful World" and "Lucky Old Sun" that the pair tap into something akin to timeless musical telepathy. Her own talents hardly in need of burnishing, Lang invests the project with some gratifying new smokiness and is rewarded with a postgraduate course in saloon singing for the ages. It's an album that begs the best kind of question: when do we get an encore? --Jerry McCulley
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