excerpt:

..."This Love of Mine" is one of Mr. Cole's very best albums, and it whets the appetite perfectly for his performances at Le Jazz Au Bar, where he will be performing until June 12.

Now reunited with Todd Barkan, the producer of his great string of CDs from the 1990s, Mr. Cole has come up with 10 exceptional songs and he sings them gloriously straight-ahead and swinging.

The mood, appropriately, is halfway between his late brother Nat's "After Midnight" and Sinatra's "Wee Small Hours." Mr. Cole includes the song "This Love of Mine," the chairman's own co-composition, and, as is his custom, he throws in one item from the book of his older brother, "The Continental." He even makes a set of dance instructions sound warm and intimate.

The payoff track is Rube Bloom and Ted Koehler's 1934 "Out in the Cold Again" - which, even though it has been done by several major R&B singers, hasn't been heard nearly enough in jazz circles. Starting with the verse, which I have never heard before, Mr. Cole's vocal is slow and deliberate, like a monologue addressed both to his object of desire and to himself. He has an air of resignation - bleak but with a sense of self-deprecating humor...