Very much a singer's singer, Tony Bennett and his tuxedo have been admired and feted from supper club to nightclub for close on sixty years. Bottom line, if you need a ballad crooned, then Tony is generally your man. Generally, but not here - 'Stranger In Paradise' is not the best place to meet up with the man for the first time as doing so may leave you scratching your head as to what all the fuss is about. Not that that's necessarily Tony's fault - taken from the musical 'Kismet' (with a tune borrowed from Borodin), 'Stranger In Paradise' has a lovey dovey lyric that piles it all on a bit too thickly - "If I stand starry-eyed that's the danger in paradise, for mortals who stand beside an angel like you". Even written down the sugary excess makes my teeth throb, but the restrained musical arrangement pushes Tony right to the front with no hiding place and he delivers the lines with a quivering voiced sincerity that's wincingly mawkish; in trying to convince he means what he's saying, his delivery overeggs the pudding until it clumps with all the falseness of a wooden leg. Ok, maybe I'm of the wrong age and the wrong gender to properly appreciate this, but that's not my fault either. I mean, it's not that I find 'Stranger In Paradise' hateful, it's just that I don't find anything here that appeals at all on any level. Sorry.
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