Jamie Cullum: Twentysomething

Reviewed by RUSSELL BAILLIE

Herald rating: * * *

As a musical product, Jamie Cullum is a worry. He's a young Brit bloke with a pleasant voice, jazz piano chops - honed while playing aboard cruise ships - and evidently eclectic music tastes.

He thanks, among others, Michael Parkinson for making it all possible. He was signed to jazz label Verve by its owners Universal for one million quid which the company probably made back by Christmas with the British sales of this, his second album. Now the push is on to make him a star further afield.

Initially, he can come on a bit too cute for his own good. While he certainly can tickle an ivory, there's little proof in the few brief solos in these 14 tracks that he is anything really special as a pianist.

Despite the arrangements and his rendering of six standards including I Get a Kick Out Of You (cue comedy sniff on the "cocaine" line, cheeky chappy) and Singin' in the Rain, it's soon apparent he's about as jazz as the Japanese hatchback of same name.

Still, Twentysomething gets there as an album, mainly because it swings with infectious enthusiasm and Cullum's voice and playing make solid work of those standards as well as the few lyrically wry originals, some written by his brother Ben.

It takes most risks on the rock-reinterpretations. While he successfully turns Jimi Hendrix's The Sky Cries Mary into a Van Morrison-like number, he also drains the angst out of Radiohead's High and Dry and the desire out of Jeff Buckley's Lover You Should Have Come Over.

Cullum is on more solid - and groovy - ground with his take on the Neptunes' Frontin'.

Making him a star in places that don't get Parkinson shouldn't be that hard - in a world where many a car CD offers a choice of Norah Jones or Robbie Williams, he is the perfect median.

(Verve/Universal)