Keep The Summer Alive

I feel good about being an American this summer, and my summer soundtrack is going to be the new Beach Boys' album, "That's Why God Made the Radio." Yeah, it's been decades since Brian and Mike made a record together, and they're all pushing 70. But as someone wiser than me said 30-plus years ago, keep the summer alive. And keep on dancin'.

The Soft Sound

I think of it as the World Soft Championships, to steal a phrase from Warner Brothers ' legendary liner notes writer Stan Cornyn. That's how he described the brand new album "Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim" in 1967. The same phrase comes to mind with the release of Paul McCartney's new album "Kisses on the Bottom."

Both Sinatra and McCartney are singing without a safety net, unless you count the airtight backing ensembles they have setting the mood. Neither man was ever more vulnerable in the recording studio. This is the real Let It Be Naked.

The albums are impeccably performed and recorded, with Jobim and, in McCartney's case, Diana Krall as co-conspirators throughout. The singers are nuanced and right on the note. Even the packaging works.

Highlights? Sinatra's bossa take on Cole Porter's "I Concentrate On You" is inspired, and he's positively poetic on Jobim's "Quiet Night of Quiet Stars." McCartney delivers a heartbreaking take on Irving Berlin's "Always," then turns around to lightly groove on Fats Waller's "My Very Good Friend The Milkman." But both albums are seamless.

Let the Soft Championships begin.