Frank Sinatra – In the Wee Small Hours Review

Easy-listening, traditional pop covers are tricky work. Credit is not given where it is due to the modern lounge musicians. Those who can capture a mood without making it a display of their talents. Frank Sinatra captured that well with In the Wee Small Hours, a background noise album with more than a few moments which could, if a party quiets down, steal the show. His suaveness is as embedded in the image of Sinatra as a singer as it is in his public appeal beyond the studio. It may not be all that accurate, but those who are dead are remembered, most of the time, for their accomplishments. In the Wee Small Hours is an example of Sinatra at his best and worst. He could conjure a momentum with just his voice that still leaves an imprint. Songs away from this album, like My Way and Fly Me to the Moon, perfect this. He would seek that sleekness on his albums, and rarely would it falter. Therein lies the problem.  

Sinatra, particularly on In the Wee Small Hours, comes through as a one-note emotional singer. He is either buoyant with his success or slumped in a chair and licking his wounds. In the Wee Small Hours is still a wonderful listen, but it becomes clear from the swell heard on the title track. Songs of reflection open the album, and yet the relationships to be learned from are repeated afterwards. Sinatra may want us to think it’s an argument for and against following the wildness of the heart, but there’s never the depth to display that. Excellent songs all the same, just lacking a wider purpose. Sinatra has a quality voice, the crooner classic which generations remain familiar with. More spoken word than singing on Glad to Be Unhappy, an early example of Sinatra using his voice as an instrument. But read into those frank moments a little deeper, and you find the emotional core which keeps people returning to In the Wee Small Hours decades later.  

Songs which have a heartbroken singer convince himself he’s doing just fine without the love of his life. Obvious on I Get Along Without You Very Well, crushing on a piece like I’ll Be Around. It’s that inability to move on, that paralysis of emotional intensity, which Sinatra captures. Give it a listen late at night and it’s far easier to warm to. Songs like Can’t We Be Friends? sound magnificent, enraged but reserving the bitterness and holding it back as best Sinatra can. Pair that with some sparse instrumentals, a piano that sets an ever-changing mood, and it becomes a key example of Sinatra’s studio charm. Sinatra, constantly, mourns the loss of a love which he still sounds incapable of comprehending. Stick around for the B-side, it’s where the strongest parts of In the Wee Small Hours can be found.  

All of it depends on how much love you have for Sinatra’s voice. That’s it. The arrangements are classics, as strong as the standards he brings to life here. Take the run of What Is This Thing Called Love to Ill Wind and you get the best example of Sinatra as a crooner whose heart is constantly crushed. Yet that spirit, the easy-going front he puts on, the one everyone fell in love with, is a constant. Easy it is to perform songs of heartbreak, it’s almost impossible to find a satisfying and hopeful end point. Sinatra does that on In the Wee Small Hours. It’s what keeps his ninth studio album in the conversation for one of the most accessible, and exceptional, vocal jazz albums. I’ll Never Be the Same and This Love of Mine suggests it’s a cycle, not a one-off experience. The highs and lows of In the Wee Small Hours will continue, it’s clear from the tone set by these wonderful standards.