Jamie Cullum: The Pursuit
Jamie Cullum: The Pursuit
Thursday, 05, Nov 2009 10:38
Decca Records, out November 9th.
In a nutshell...
Fun, funky and accessible
What's it all about?
Featuring easygoing current single I'm All Over It, Jamie Cullum's new album The Pursuit sees the versatile star dipping his toes into Coldplay-styled anthems and rich veins of jazz-lite.
Who's it by
The Pursuit is Jamie Cullum's fifth album and draws its' title from Nancy Mitford's classic novel The Pursuit Of Love: "Always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair they loved or they loathed, they lived in a world of superlatives."
This is Cullum's first new solo album in four years and he says of the LP: "In life, we pursue everything. Life is one long pursuit."
The making of The Pursuit was something of a marathon for the artist. After taking a couple of years off after 2005's Catching Tales, Cullum turned to other projects.
He said: "I played in other people's bands and DJ'ed, made dance music with my brother and travelled."
He also found the time among all this to build his own studio called Terrified Studios in Shepherds Bush.
"I call it that because I am so unknowledgeable about technology that I'm usually terrified when I'm in there," he says laughing.
All the songs on The Pursuit started life on Jamie's kitchen and in the studio before the recording process shifted to LA for three months during the summer of 2008.
It was in Los Angeles that Cullum hooked up with producer and long-time associate Greg Wells.
Yet Cullum's kitchen was never far from proceedings as some of the material created there found its way to California.
"We realised there were some things we couldn't recreate in any studio," he reveals.
"There's a Rhodes solo on a song called We Run Things which I played on two different organs in LA but in the end we used the performance I recorded in my little kitchen in London."
Recording in the US pushed Cullum out of his usual routines and techniques. He said: "I didn't want to make this album with my old band or my old producer. I needed to frighten myself.
"Getting out of your comfort zone is such a cliche but it really worked."
With members of Beck's band working on the recording sessions and the horn section that appeared on Michael Jackson's legendary Thriller in the mix, The Pursuit was finished last autumn and as Cullum was preparing to present it to his record company bosses, a Hollywood icon came calling in the form of Clint Eastwood.
Cullum had met Eastwood through the actor's son Kyle, a fellow jazz musician and as a result Jamie Cullum had contributed to the Clint Eastwood-composed soudtrack to the 2007 film Grace Is Gone, directed by John Cusack.
Now the Dirty Harry star was back with another mission for Cullum.
"He asked me to play at the Monterey Jazz Festival. After my performance which he loved, he threw the script for Gran Torino at me and said 'I want you to write music for this.'"
Cullum ended up recording music for Gran Torino at Eastwood's home and the two have since became firm friends.
"We hung out talking about girls and drinking beer," said Cullum.
With new album The Pursuit, Cullum has been able to give free reign to his wide-ranging tastes in music.
He said: "I think I've come close to fully realising what I should be with this record."
Jamie Cullum will be touring next May, starting with Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall on May 7th.
His tour also takes in Dublin's Olympia on the 9th, London's Palladium on the 16th and Colston Hall in Bristol on the 22nd.
As an example...
"Something that I never had/Tell you what I've heard/The wheels have fallen off the world." - Wheels
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
Friends with Clint Eastwood, making music for movies and now hitting his stride creatively, I don't see why the lad can't make it big on the Grammy front.
What the others say
"The Pursuit is 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 for the first time, testing out all the possibilities." - BBC Music
"Jamie is just fantastic and certainly does not deserve to be called 'just' a jazz musician - he's got a real talent sadly lacking with so many of the pre-fabricated bands we see today." - Music.co.uk
So is it any good?
Commenting on The Pursuit, Cullum said: "I didn't know who I was when I was 19."
However, as he approaches the ripe old age of 30 it's apparent that the Twentysomething star is getting a handle on who he is both musically and as a person.
And it's this sense of self-discovery that permeates the new LP.
"When you concentrate on making music, the whole point is that you never stop and are always trying to move on. Unless you're P Diddy, I guess," says Cullum discussing the new album.
Full-on opening track, Just One Of Those Things, featuring the Count Basie Orchestra recorded live at uber-crooner Tony Bennett's New York studios, sizzles with a self-confidence and a warmth of an artist who is emerging from a tumultous time changed and revitalised, and wanting to let the world know about it.
The performer says that he lived his 20s to the fullest and his personal happiness, often inaccurately documented by the tabloids, has fuelled his new creativity.
This is highlighted by Love Ain't Gonna Let You Down, one of the album's most important songs according to Cullum, which is a broody, soul-searching stormer of a classic-in-the-making.
Cullum also indugles his love of soul-edged pop with Mixtape that follows on from Love Ain't Gonna Let You Down before things get all 'late night in Manhattan' with I Think I Love, a veritable love letter to the plaintive, blue-collar/small-time hood ethos of Sinatra and the cocktail-holding chutzpah of old troupers like Bennett.
Then the boy Cullum gets all jazz-funk with We Run Things, a punchy and abrasive downtown anthem, full of 70s bleakness and the hard-eged glamour of the streets.
Not While I'm Around is a big swirl of Coldplay/Embrace stadium-filling indie rock that is affecting and more than deserves to be released as a single.
Music Is Through closes the album but it's a damp squib; an uneasy and unsatisfying combination of Cullum's fine voice tacked on to unconvincing trip hop beats.
Yet that is what The Pursuit is all about - a willigness to experiment and try new avenues - with all the inherent ups and downs of a such a venture.
For glorious peaks like Wheels there's troughs such as a pointless cover of Don't Stop The Music, made hideously memorable by the over-hyped non-entity that is Rihanna.
Essentially, with The Pursuit we're witnessing the growth of a great artist and although there'll be a few mis-steps along the way, overall, this 12-track LP more than marks the start of a renaissance for Jamie Cullum.
9/10
Lee Davis