To See You

11/11/1997 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Josef Woodard

With his wannabe-ol'-blue-eyes croon and his dumbed-down jazz ethics, Harry Connick, Jr. has come up has come on the shallow side of the artistic pool too often, but he scores a triumph with his latest project. With these 10 original tunes, nicely slathered up with his own string arrangements, Connick shows that he has been an attentive student of the great, pre-rock American song tradition of Cole Porter et al, and comes up with his own ideas within the form. Tenor saxophonist Charles Gould's languid grace on the darkly beautiful opening tune, "Let Me Love Tonight," has a Stan Getz-ish cool about it that leaves us wanting more; Gould's improvisational poise makes up for Connick's limitations as a pianist. These are songs about love--the word is in more than half the titles--and he makes a point in his liner notes that the album should be used as an accessory to romance, but there are enough twists and turns of songcraft along the way to tease the intellect. Just when you had written him off as a fashion plate with a famous wife, Connick digs a little deeper and shows what he's made of. --Josef Woodard