Catching Tales

The jazzbo’s multi-genre sophomore disc, Catching Tales, is a potentially disastrous proposition: a gumbo of Billy Joel-style piano pop, Chet Baker’s fragile sentimentality, and the underlining smirk of British melancholy. But it works, mostly. Credit Jamie Cullum’s limber, sassy twine of a voice box for making ordinary songwriting more memorable and giving dreary lite-jazz arrangements a kinetic infusion of young blood.