Gilberto, Astrud: I Haven't Got Anything Better to Do LP

With her tenure on Verve drawing to a close, Astrud Gilberto steps further away from her bossa nova roots with I Haven't Got Anything Better to Do, an intimate, nocturnal set closer in scope and spirit to the Baroque pop of Burt Bacharach, whose "Trains and Boats and Planes" is beautifully rendered here. Mistakenly considered a minor entry in the Gilberto canon, I Haven't Got Anything Better to Do is instead a minor masterpiece. Each song is ideally suited to her distinctive style and the disc as a whole maintains a consistency of mood and feeling largely unmatched in her catalog.