Already a sensation in his native England, 22-year-old piano man
Jamie Cullum comes off like a hip amalgamation of
Harry Connick, Jr. and
Randy Newman on his sophomore effort,
Twentysomething. As with
Blue Note's crossover wunderkind
Norah Jones,
Cullum works best when he's not trying too hard to please hardcore
jazz aficionados, but it's not too difficult to imagine his bonus-track version of
Pharrell Williams'
"Frontin'" turning some
jazz fans onto
the Neptunes. Showcasing
Cullum's sardonic wit and
lounge-savvy attitude, the album deftly flows from
singer/songwriter love songs to jazzy barroom romps and reappropriated modern
rock tunes.
Cullum has a warm voice with a slight rasp that retains a bit of his Brit accent even though his influences --
Nat King Cole,
Frank Sinatra,
Tom Waits -- are resolutely American. Truthfully,
Cullum isn't the most accomplished vocalist and his piano chops are pleasant at best --
Oscar Peterson he ain't. That said, he's still a kick. What he lacks in technique he makes up for in swagger and smarts as many of his original compositions reveal. On the swinging and wickedly humorous title track -- a take on postgraduate slackerdom --
Cullum sardonically laments, "After years of expensive education, a car full of books and anticipation, I'm an expert on
Shakespeare and that's a hell of a lot but the world don't need scholars as much as I thought." It's a timely statement in our overeducated, underemployed "dot-bomb" economy and deftly posits
Cullum as a
jazz singer as much of as for his generation. Also compelling are his choices of cover tunes, as he is able to imprint his own persona on the songs while magnifying what made them brilliant to begin with. To these ends,
Jeff Buckley's
"Lover, You Should've Come Over" gets a gut-wrenchingly minimalist treatment and
Radiohead's
"High and Dry" comes off as the best
Bruce Hornsby song you've never heard. Conversely,
Cullum treats
jazz standards as modern
pop tunes, reworking them into contemporary styles that are neither cynical nor awkward. In fact, his atmospheric, '70s
AM pop take on
"Singin' in the Rain," replete with string backgrounds and
Cullum's percolating Rhodes keyboard, is one of the most appealing cuts on the album, lending the Great American Songbook warhorse an air of virginity. ~ Matt Collar
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