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| Billboard |
enre-bending, piano-prancing singer/multi-instrumentalist Jamie Cullum's new album, "The Pursuit," is his first collection of songs to capture his energy-filled live shows on record. With a wide stylistic bandwidth that incorporates everything from hard-swinging big band to backbeat-style R&B, the set showcases Cullum's myriad talents, from fearless interpreter of other artists' material to songsmith and showman of formidable force. He swings with a bebopper's abandon on a cover of Cole Porter's "Just One of Those Things," then struts with retro-glam-meets-Leon-Russell grit on his own "I'm All Over It." Wearing a multitude of musical hats, he steps effortlessly among jazz, dance and intimate singer/songwriter fare. And while many artists sound anything but comfortable breaking these kinds of musical barriers, Cullum proves once again that he sounds most like himself when the walls come tumbling down....full text |
| Bbc |
| The Pursuit is Jamie Cullum’s most experimental album to date. The end results are something akin to a sophisticated teenager experiencing the excitement of controlling a mixing desk in the recording studio for the first time, testing out all the possibilities as he experiments with abrupt cuts, up-front drums and percussion, techno riffs and, at one point, the voice of the producer calling: “Okay, are we ready?” On the opening number, Just One of Those Things, Cullum diverts our attention by singing a verse of his own making within Cole Porter’s original arrangement, before breaking away from the tune and indulging in some fancy keyboard fingering, backed to the hilt by his excellent band. He deconstructs the Ornadel/Bricusse song If I Ruled the World, erasing any vestige of the original by Harry Secombe or Tony Bennett’s affecting version. The aspiration of the words and the sturdy tune carry him through. In similar, expectations-eschewing fashion, he takes a distinctly unsentimental view of Not While I’m Around, that reassuring ballad from Sweeney Todd, avoiding the comfort zone for a rough intense delivery. I Think I Love You, for voice and piano, with its decidedly unromantic lines about throwing up in a taxi, begins with a sniff and a grunt – a gesture designed to warn us of what’s to come?...full text |
| Guardian |
| The refreshing thing about Jamie Cullum is that he's a jazz-rooted player who really loves pop, rather than a jazzer who wears pop's clothes for the bank manager's benefit. This album was recorded in settings varying from Cullum's London flat, with its upright piano, to LA – where the hired hands could include the Count Basie Orchestra and the horn section from Michael Jackson's Thriller. It takes in updated big-band swing on Just One of Those Things, Rihanna's Don't Stop the Music, Sweeney Todd's Not While I'm Around and the breakbeat, house and Latin-jiving references that Cullum and his composer brother Ben have been delving into just as eagerly as jazz for years. Just One of Those Things, rearranged for Cullum by the veteran Frank Foster, rolls out over an adapted Monk lick. The Latin You and Me Are Gone has a live feel and lots of handclapping and bongos, and Cullum's trademark vocal slides and crisp piano fills fizz engagingly. His Michael Jacksonesque grunts and exhalations on Don't Stop the Music sound like the only forced references. Jazzers won't suddenly get the point of Cullum through this, but a lot more pop fans might....full text |
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