Jamie Cullum is naff, and not in an endearing way. There are many artists whose lack of cool is a pleasure to behold (who could not be charmed by The Darkness’ ability to be entertainingly out-of-step with their contemporaries?), but Cullum is a different species.
He possesses a more unpleasant strain of this unfortunate condition: a suffocatingly bland, and very British quality, that affects several of that nation’s top entertainers – think Jamie Oliver, Chris Martin or (God help us) big-haired Toploader vocalist Joseph Washbourne. These artists, along with Cullum, possess a self-satisfied cocksure swagger which might be infectious if their professional work didn’t possess all the style and glamour of an extended Antiques Roadshow episode.
Catching Tales is the follow-up to Cullum’s hugely successful 2004 album Twentysomething, and he is not about to change a successful formula – more light, piano-driven cocktail jazz, with the odd “hip” indie/modern rock cover to show the youngsters there’s more to him than MOR Radio 4 fodder.
Mercifully, there’s nothing on the album as stupefyingly drab as Cullum’s wine-bar-friendly rendition of Radiohead’s ‘High And Dry’. His re-working of Doves’ ‘Catch The Sun’ proves to be surprisingly amiable, and opening track ‘Get Your Way’ is rather good: a stomping groove, a rumbling piano hook – it possesses a purpose that is absent from much of Cullum’s other material.
He loses this momentum almost immediately afterwards though, as ‘London Skies’ and ‘Photograph’ begin a rapid descent back into smoky, late-night ennui. There is nothing terribly offensive on Catching Tales, but with repeated listens, these semi-melodic easy-listening doodles gradually form one piece of forgettable ambient mush, and a sense of crushing, heaving boredom becomes inescapable.