SOUNDS WRITE By ANTHONY LOMAN Whilst his friends were listening to the likes of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the teenage Michael Buble favoured the music he discovered via his grandfather's record collection. For Buble (pronounced boo-blay') the coolest music was that performed by Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald. Songs with great lyrics and strong melodies were what attracted Buble most and he could not understand why more of his contemporaries did not "dig" the same music as him.

By day the young Michael Buble worked as a fisherman alongside his father in his native British Columbia whilst at night, he served his musical apprenticeship singing the songs he loved in seedy, small town bars. The singer's big break came when he was spotted singing in 2000 at the wedding of Caroline Mulroney, the daughter of the former Canadian Prime Minister.

"A fisherman's life is tough", says Buble, "It's a physically demanding job. People say it's hard being a musician but it's a piece of cake compared to trawling for salmon in the wind and rain." Buble was quickly signed to the Warners imprint label, Reprise Records which, ironically, had been set up many years earlier by one of his great musical heroes, Ole Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra.

In recent years, jazz and the music of the great crooners has become eminently fashionable having been embraced by such artists as Harry Connick Jnr, Jamie Cullum, Norah Jones, Robbie Williams, Buble himself and most recently, even by boy band Westlife. All of a sudden, a whole new young generation of fans are discovering and falling in love with this music of a bygone era that it's now become so hip and cool to love.

Michael Buble's eponymously titled debut album has now sold in excess of three million copies worldwide and now the singer, still only 29, looks set to move on up to the next level with the release of his second album It's Time'. This latest release continues very much in the same vein as his first record, being predominantly made up of covers of all-time classic songs such as A Foggy Day(in London Town)', Nina Simone's Feeling Good', Quando, Quando, Quando'(on which Buble duets with fellow Canadian Nelly Furtado), Ray Charles' You Don't Know Me', Otis Redding's Try A Little Tenderness', Can't Buy Me Love' and the beautiful Stevie Wonder composition You And I'. Also, for the first time, one of Buble's self-penned songs, Home' is included on the album.

There is no doubting Buble's vocal ability he has a great range and holds a note better than most, he also has the requisite good looks and cuts quite a dash in the same sharp suits that Sinatra used to favour. However, as good as he is, he is not without his flaws, for on a number of the songs he has chosen to cover on It's Time', he sounds completely emotionally detached from the record and this is most noticeable on Simone's Feeling Good', Wonder's You And I' and Leon Russell's A Song For You' on none of which he even gets close to equalling the originals. Buble's technical performance on these records is fine but they come over as sounding far too clinical and it's as if the real emotion and feeling that these songs need to be imbued with to be fully convincing, has been siphoned off. But the singer redeems himself with his excellent renditions of The More I See You', Save The Last Dance For Me' You Don't Know Me.

Buble is certainly much more than a glorified karaoke singer and a cruise ship crooner, he IS a quality performer but it takes far more than a good voice combined with a great haircut and a well-tailored suit to become the next Sinatra. As U2's Bono once said, "It's Sinatra's world, we just live in it."