Bob Dylan to release Sinatra covers album

One of pop music’s most belovedly craggy singers is taking on one of its most golden voices.

Bob Dylan has announced a Feb. 3 release date for “Shadows in the Night,” his long-rumored LP of songs made popular by Frank Sinatra. The record will include Sinatra songbook standards like “I’m a Fool to Want You” and “Some Enchanted Evening.”

“I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time but was never brave enough to approach 30-piece complicated arrangements and refine them down for a five-piece band,” Dylan said in a statement.

“I don’t see myself as covering these songs in any way. They’ve been covered enough. Buried, as a matter a fact. What me and my band are basically doing is uncovering them. Lifting them out of the grave and bringing them into the light of day.”

Dylan had previously released the track “Full Moon and Empty Arms” from the LP, and had covered “Stay With Me” on recent tour dates. Dylan said the the LP was recorded with minimal takes and no overdubs, in stark contrast to the rich orchestrations of the Sinatra originals.

The album is Dylan’s first since 2012’s well-received LP “Tempest.” But the selection of vocally virtuosic cover material might surprise fans who have seen Dylan’s recent shows. The Times’ Randall Roberts said of his 2012 Hollywood Bowl stand that “it was hard to tell whether the guy with the gutter-nasal voice was actually Dylan or a monster with indigestion.”

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