Michael Buble

Call Me Irresponsible

143 Records/Reprise 1003132

         For Michael Bublé (pronounced Boo-BLAY) fans, The Best Is Yet To Come has already arrived in the celebrated crooner's third studio album for 143 Records/Reprise, Call Me Irresponsible. With two Grammy nominations under his belt and 11 million albums sold in the five short years he's exploded on to the music scene, this is Bublé's best project yet, artistically speaking. 

The thirteen track disc showcases Bublé’s heightened level of maturity and comfortableness with himself as a song stylist with modern interpretations of standards from a variety of eras, including songs by such greats as Leonard Cohen, Eric Clapton, Cy Coleman, Gamble and Huff, and others, as well as two self-penned originals: the uplifting love song called Everything, and the moody Lost. 

The young crooner is joined on the upbeat Comin' Home Baby by the vocal group Boyz II Men, while the Bublé-Ivan Lins English-Spanish collaboration splashes on more seductiveness to the romantic Wonderful Night.

Bublé gives a suave reading on the Johnny Mandel arrangement of Johnny Mercer's World War II quixotic piece, Dream.

With Call Me Irresponsible, Bublé has The World On A String... and it doesn't appear that he will "ever let go." He is an amazing talent whose cool and hip vocal style and mature interpretation savvy can give any song panache. 

Track selections:  The Best Is Yet To Come, It Had Better Be Tonight, Me And Mrs. Jones, I'm Your Man, Come Home Baby (duet with Boyz II Men), Lost, Call Me Irresponsible, Wonderful Tonight (duet with Ivan Lins), Everything, I've Got The World On A String, Always On My Mind, That's Life, Dream.

- Stephen Fratallone/Jazz Connection Magazine

Rating:  *****

*****