To be released on Universal Records in the first quarter of next year, pianist Jamie Cullum’s new album, Mild Vanilla, is his best album since his last one. Having been hard at work for five years, Jamie has really been pushing the envelope and exploring the boundaries of contemporary jazz. “I was reading in the music section of the London Paper about these pretty far out acts like Jay-Z, Philip Glass, and The Arcade Fire, thinking ‘wow, I wonder if I could work a little of that into my material?’” he told us.
Jamie Cullum: we want MOR Jamie’s innovative style is back en force. We find him thumping the lid of the piano as if it were a percussive instrument in its own right, human beatboxing, and trying a few new tricks. “I found this really great noise you can make if you smash your face as hard as you can into the piano” says Jamies about standout track, Marks & Spencer’s Prawn Sandwiches. “Kinda sounds like the smell of pork.”
As ever, there are one or two cover versions thrown in for luck – his jazz restyling of Johnny Cash’s version of Nine-Inch-Nails’ Hurt marks a fairly poignant moment, but his piano-only rendition of the Arctic Monkeys’ anthem I bet that you look good on the dance floor stands out as accurate to original in both pitch and meter.
A promotional tour is planned with dates around England and Northern Europe, but you can check out a teaser of new single, Polishing a Turd, when Jamie guests on Jools Holland’s New Year Hootenanny on BBC2.
6/10
Next week: Tim Dowling on Sunn0))) and the Norwegian church burnings of 1994.