Crash landing for Buble

Come Fly With Me

(CD and DVD)

Michael Buble

Warner Bros.

You just have to ask, Who is managing Michael Buble’s career? It’s as if, having made an instant star out of the youngish Canadian singer, Mr. Buble’s handlers are now doing their darndest to tank his prospects. How else can one explain “Come Fly With Me,” the truly disappointing follow-up to Mr. Buble’s self-titled debut?

The first record came out in early 2003 and featured Mr. Buble singing a rather less than imaginative collection of songs from the swinger era. Some were excellent, if somewhat overexposed, songs: “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Come Fly With Me.” And some were the sort of hackneyed tunes that musicians unfamiliar with the riches of the great American songbook seem drawn to —”Fever,” “For Once in My Life” and the now trite-beyond-all-imagining “Moondance.” Not exactly a mix of music that a confident or sophisticated musician would have chosen. But it was Mr. Buble’s first outing, so one was inclined to cut him some slack and praise the quality of his voice.

Now comes Mr. Buble’s sophomore effort, and we find him performing — “Fever,” “Moondance,” “For Once in My Life,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” and the title track “Come Fly With Me.” Yes, this is a live recording, so there is some variation, for example, the studio disc lacks applause. But otherwise, there is little in this package that will be new for the hungry Buble fan.

Little, but not nothing. There are two new studio cuts pasted on to the top of the proceedings. But they do not bode well for Mr. Buble’s future efforts. The first, “Nice ’n Easy,” is a tepid rehash that adds nothing imaginative to the iconic Sinatra original. And the next, “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” is an embarrassingly treacly reading of the Elvis hit.

Perhaps the worst aspect of Mr. Buble’s new CD is that his musical vices are becoming more pronounced. From the get-go he has had a tendency to mimic the singers whose material he is covering. When he sings a Bobby Darin tune, he heps and babes it up in best Darin fashion; if the original is Sinatra, Mr. Buble channels Frank; when he does Elvis, you can just see him practicing the pose in the mirror, his hips just so. Zelig-like, Mr. Buble lacks his own identity as a singer or a musician. He would, no doubt, be very successful as an American Idol contestant.

By contrast, remember when Harry Connick Jr. first hit the scene? The soundtrack to “When Harry Met Sally” catapulted Mr. Connick to stardom (even though the movie, which relied on classic cuts from Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra, actually contained very little of the material released on the soundtrack). The easiest thing in the world would have been for Mr. Connick, in his follow-up, to release an album of standard standards, imitating the versions long-ago performed by the singers to whom he was being compared. Instead, to his credit as a musician, Mr. Connick came out with a record that featured a slew of original compositions. It was gutsy — and hugely successful.

If there is an excuse for Mr. Buble’s live CD, it is that it is the soundtrack to the DVD that rounds out the “Come Fly With Me” package. But it isn’t much of an excuse. The video is a shockingly amateurish affair, made all the more shocking by comparison with the slick production values of Mr. Buble’s first record. The stagecraft is nonexistent, and the camerawork pedestrian. To give the musical numbers the illusion of energy, everything has been cut together in a herky-jerky fashion, often with two or three images of Mr. Buble from various angles superimposed on top of themselves. The DVD was done on the cheap, and it shows.

Even worse, the tunes are stitched together with faux documentary bits meant to ape classic films about the early tours of the Beatles or Bob Dylan. Again and again we find ourselves in a cab or a limo with Mr. Buble, who looks into the lens and tells us what a great singer he is, saying things like “the first time I knew I had talent …” Oh my.

As a singer, Mr. Buble has a fine voice. As a musician, he is a prisoner of his assortment of hepster affectations. Perhaps on his next record he will begin to bridge the yawning gap, but sadly, with this CD and DVD the chasm has only widened.

The great American songbook deserves better.