Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely
Look past the tacky, sad-clown velvet painting on the cover (a Grammy-winner for album design in 1959!), there's nothing cheap or sentimental about  this record--the bleakest and blackest album of popular songs ever recorded, so  quietly powerful it can leave you slumped in your chair with the ice cubes still  rattling in your glass. Every single "suicide song" (as Sinatra liked  to call 'em) onOnly the Lonelyis a stunner that will take your breath  away.  Nelson Riddle's arrangements are like shadows, almost colorless and  motionless, so that all you hear is the ache in the singer's voice.  "Angel  Eyes" and "One for My Baby" each deserve an album to themselves-- so exquisitely moving that at the end of three minutes you feel like you've just  heard a lifetime of loneliness.  My only regret--and it's a big one--is that  this flawless masterpiece doesn't include Billy Strayhorn's "Lush  Life," which truly belongs here; Sinatra put it into an already overcrowded  recording schedule and, when fatigue and the difficulty of the song defeated him  after a couple takes, he gave up and never attempted it again. We got the  chillingly lovely "Willow Weep For Me" instead, so I'm really not  complaining--but that just adds to the pang of loss that this album expresses so  vividly.  Drink up!--Jim Emerson