"Harp Spirals, Frosty Vibraphone Droplets And Heavily Wafting Strings" Dept.

You're going to dismiss this as easy listening pablum, because although you pride yourself on your broad-ranging musical tastes ("it's all good"), this is - obviously, from the title and cover - something Populuxe suburbanites spun on their consolettes at weekend cocktail parties. Music for morons, or worse, your parents.

But you'd be wrong. Not totally, hopelessly wrong - how could you be that? But wrong in a nuanced way that does you credit. This is no exotica or lounge novelty for smirking vinyl fetishists with kidney-shaped coffee tables. This is Nelson Riddle, in 1961, when covers like this were considered steamy stuff. Elvis was safely in the Army and beat groups yet to change pop forever - well, at least until nobody cared about them any more. Look at it this way - if you were newlyweds (what a heartbreaking word) in '61, your future bright as the chrome on the Chrysler Newport in the driveway, you'd have picked this up at the record store and been pretty damn cool. It wouldn't have been an ironic purchase to show how hip you were.

And it's Nelson Riddle, fercrissakes, the Noo Joizy boy who became one of Sinatra's most distinguished arrangers. Worked with all the greats, won all the awards, and made a surprising comeback in the 'eighties with Linda Ronstadt.

So - quality is assured. Human musicality, talent and skill present in profligate abundance. But can you listen to it without feeling sick to your stomach? Can this music be appreciated for what it is - an interlude of relaxing escapism and exotic romance - without cultural change and the blight of irony souring it? I'm guessing not, but give it a try. That Newport won't suddenly materialize in the sunny driveway, but you're on th' Isle O' Foam©, where interludes of relaxing escapism and exotic romance are enforceable by law.

Hi-Fi listening tip: avoid embarrassing string shrillness by rolling the treble right back on the RIAA curve!