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I bought The Pursuit about six months ago and initially I wasn't all that impressed. However, after each play I found myself enjoying it more and more and these days it's permanently resident in my phone's relatively limited memory (damn you Nexus and your lack of external memory!) Most of Jamie's albums are a mixture of jazz standards and original work and The Pursuit, his fifth studio album, doesn't stray too far from this formula. "Just One of Those Things" (#1) is a Cole Porter classic and "If I Ruled The World" (#4) is from the musical Pickwick (which I've never heard of). I had assumed the ballad "Not While I'm Around" (#11) was written by Cullum for his daughter but it turns out it's from the musical Sweeney Todd; you know the one with all the blood and guts and murder.
Some of my favourite tracks:
#1 Just One of those Things. I like the big bandiness of this (yes, I made that word up)
#3 Wheels. I like the feel of the drums, it makes me reminisce about riding a train through Europe.
#4 If I Ruled The World
#8 Mixtape. It makes me smile every time, then it makes me feel old because I know what a "tape" is.
#12 Gran Turino. I don't remember this song in the film, but the simplicity of this tune is nice.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1047122/jamie_cullum.zip
PS: For anyone considering his latest album Momentum I can't recommend it. However it has a great cover of Pure Imagination (Willy Wonka):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1047122/Pure%20Imagination.mp3
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI had another Jamie Cullum album - Twenty Something - that I had not listened for a while and I was pleased when I saw him on the musoklub.
And I must say that I like The Pursuit. Well, I don't like every song, but I like most of them. I like pretty much Just One of those Things, because of its dynamism, also its cover of Don't stop the music and all the slower ones which are more jazzy (like I'm all over it of If I ruled the world). Not a big fan though of the other more dynamic one, which are too poppy and not jazzy enough for me.
3.5
I had not listened to Jaime before but was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this album. He has a pretty fresh and original approach to covers and the originals (at least the songs I didn't recognize as covers) were very solid as well. I give this a 4 out of 5.
ReplyDeleteI want to dislike it, because I feel like if you told me this was Harry Connick Jr. I'd believe you so it seems like it's not original, but I like it. And who doesn't love a Rihanna cover?
ReplyDeleteWas talking to my brother (Ben) when this post was published:
ReplyDeleteRohan - "Did you see the latest album posted on Musooklub? Someone has gone and posted Jamie Cullum, if you can believe it!"
Ben - "Yes, that was me..."
I couldn't get past the first few tracks on this one. I'm not sure if someone told him the 'I haven't slept in a week and I've gone done smoked a carton of cigarettes' sound was sexy when he was a teen, but man it just made me want to stomp on his carefully preened head. For a guy that clearly has a lot of talent, just ruined.
And that song about shagging? All right, we get it. Sex is grand and you had some. Good boy.
1/5
Wow, you really hate this album. Do you like any of his other stuff or are you anti-Cullum?
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