Smooth jazzy sounds are given the Jamie Cullum treatment. If you have always been a fan of easy listening/ elevator music then you will swallow this album like a smooth glass of bourbon (or whatever the new-age rat packer’s are drinking these days). Cullum is known as Britain’s "quirky" elvin answer to ol’ blue eyes. Which means that as a package he works well with his elaborately messed up hair and "funky" image.
Listening to this album is a bit like eating something very creamy and sweet, but with no other discernable taste. While I instinctively object to anyone so self consciously quirky (it goes against the grain somehow), the fact that he has constant radio play over a fairly large segment of the population seems to indicate that he has a certain appeal. Otherwise it is a well produced album on which Cullum (without despoiling his plastic brow with a drop of sweat) works his way through the usual standards, (I only have eyes for you, 7 Days to Change Your Life) as well as some more poorly chosen songs that are odd attempts at a more alternative audience. Catch the Sun, and Photograph were examples. On these tracks he sounds like almost anyone who ever dabbled in mediocrity.
Undoubtedly his best stuff is the simple piano jazz numbers on which he takes it up a notch and begins to approximate something like real feeling.
