At first blush, the 1963
Andy Williams album
Days of Wine and Roses and the 1966
Andy Williams album
In the Arms of Love look like an odd pairing for Collectables Records' two-fer series of CD reissues, and you wonder why the albums were not paired with LPs adjacent to them chronologically, especially because
Days of Wine and Roses was by far
Williams' biggest commercial success, topping the charts for months, and
In the Arms of Love was a commercial disappointment, the only newly recorded album
Williams made between 1963 and 1969 that was not a gold-record seller. (Maybe that's the reason for the pairing, if Collectables figured the first album would help sell the second.) In retrospect, however, the two albums deserve to be together because they are
Williams' two least impressive efforts of the period. Despite its commercial success, which was built on the inclusion of the number one hit "Can't Get Used to Losing You" and the Oscar-winning title song,
Days of Wine and Roses is an extremely uneven collection that features a number of singularly inappropriate arrangements.
In the Arms of Love fails because it does not achieve the stylistic balance
Williams strove for on his albums; too much of it features becalmed performances set to samba rhythms. None of this is to say that the albums don't feature some effective performances of memorable tunes by
Williams. But on the whole, these are among his weaker efforts.