Growing up in public
Jamie Cullum
(universal Music)
JAMIE Cullum is no industry virgin – Momentum is his sixth studio album – but he manages to preserve a youthfulness and wide-eyed wonder all the same.
While the cheeky 33-year-old Englishman usually tends to shoot for retro-jazz and smooth, silky vocals; Momentum is an exciting change. He plays with the electric piano, with funk, with soaring rousing melodies rather than the chicly understated tunes of yesteryear.
Produced by hip studio mavericks Dan the Automator and Jim Abbiss, Momentum is a statement from Cullum that he wants to push the limits. But Cullum has always been the tuneful sort, and he has enough accessible material to keep on the right side of the mainstream. Strong tracks on this 12-song album include The Same Things and You’re Not The Only One, the latter is unctuous and catchy with an underlying sadness and a hook that most musicians can only dream of writing.
Momentum is a solid pop rock record, with subtle synth lines underscoring the whole thing. Cullum’s skill as a songwriter comes to the fore in this album, and you can’t help but be fond of the fella. However, there are some fumbles – Cole Porter’s Love For $ale (with rapper Roots Manuva), for example, is flat and unentertaining in its attempt to be edgy. Pure Imagination is slow and tiresome, his vocals scratchy and unappealing. Maybe covers aren’t Jamie’s thing?
Momentum is a darker, more experimental Jamie – but one that still approaches music and his jazzy piano boy ways with enthusiasm and a verve that belies his experience.
Nataly Dawn
(Warner Music) HALF of Youtube sensation duo Pomplamoose, Nataly Dawn’s Kickstarter-funded debut solo album is twee in all the right places and ways.
Admittedly, it’s a bit unfair to call it a wholly solo effort as it’s produced, arranged and orchestrated by her Pomplomoose partner Jack Conte.
Safely Starbuckian in its hooks and rhymes, the 12-track album plays it safe – solid cafe music in the vein of Feist with a voice built along Regina Spektor’s range. Not a bad thing, but not necessarily amazing either.
Title track How I Knew Her shines, a solid beat and expansive arrangement making for a delightful song; but there are sour notes (the confusing and clunky Long Running Joke which sounds like a poor man’s Laura Marling album reject).
Also outstanding is the rich, effulgent Why Did You Marry, which is both despairing and accusatory (although admittedly a bit offensive in its condescension).
All props to Conte, the strings throughout the album are delicately beautiful and almost fairy-like in their whimsical nature.
Dawn hasn’t quite figured out her niche, it seems – she tries several tricks like jitterbug-inspired beats, kitschy cutesy lyrics, and eclectic jarring Fiona Apple-esque vocal inflections – but she doesn’t commit to any of these, resulting in an album which lacks defined personality.
How I Knew Her is rainy day music that will be inoffensive regardless of venue or context – but don’t expect a solid meal or a rich dessert from what’s the musical equivalent of fluffy, cloudy meringue.
John Fogerty
(Sony Music) IT’S hard to know how you should feel about John Fogerty’s new album, Wrote A Song For Everyone. It’s 14 tracks long, two are new and the other 12 reworkings of Creedence Clearwater Revival classics like Proud Mary and Fortunate Son.
The reworkings feature big names like Foo Fighters, Kid Rock, and Zac Brown Band, but – inasmuch as it feels like blasphemy to say a word against John Fogerty – the inclusion of someone like Dave Grohl does more harm than good to fond memories of CCR.
Fogerty, now 68, once famously called his voice a “unique instrument”, but unfortunately age has robbed him of his pipes in the strangest way possible: gone is the raspy, husky rawness of yesterday’s Fogerty. Now we’re listening to a watered-down, almost American Idol-esque version of events.
The most painful track is Fortunate Son – Foo Fighters, bless its heart, does its best with the iconic, unforgettable guitar intro but just can’t seem to nail it. Gone is the twanging urgency of the original, replaced with a souped-up version that’s just so much tuneless shouting.
Another downer is classic Lodi – Fogerty teams up with his sons Tyller and Shane to take on the tale of sadness and disappointment. While both the kids (on acoustic and electric guitars) perform well, Lodi isn’t meant to be bluesy and, well, almost cheerful. Lodi is the archetypal lament, CCR was stuck in a dead-end town before Tracy Chapman discovered fast cars. This new version is justdoesn’t cut it
New track Mystic Highway, unsurprisingly, isn’t bad. Forgerty still has loads of talent and the man can write a song. But this can’t detract from a Disneyfied Bad Moon Rising with Zac Brown Band (thereby earning Fogerty a special place in Hell), a trite Born On The Bayou (Kid Rock should be shot), and an uninterested, detached Someday Never Comes featuring Dawes (where you miss Fogerty’s plaintive drawl more than ever).
As an album Wrote A Song For Everyone is a self-indulgent work that takes perfection and strips it of soul, smashes it up, and repackages it in polystyrene and cling film. It’s an uncomfortable, disappointing let-down, made worse by the anticipation you feel popping the CD into your player.
It’s with utmost sadness that I say Wrote A Song For Everyone is a poor, plain pastiche and a disservice to the works of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Bad pub singing at best – if you’re looking for some good CCR covers you might as well drop by Waikiki in Petaling Jaya in Selangor on a Friday night.