"There were a lot of people trying to get involved, saying, 'You should do this, you should do that.' What I did was immediately avoid all that and said, 'Look, leave me alone and I'll make a record when I'm ready,' " Cullum recalls.

So with the record company thinking he was taking a break, "what I did was almost secretly make a record," he says gleefully. "I got home and started playing the piano again and started writing songs again. I started arranging. I went and did some gigs with other bands I used to be in. In about three months I had 28 songs with no specific work ethic. I was just home, having a blast, making music."

With a home studio in his London flat (where he was preparing a Valentine's Day meal for his girlfriend during this interview), Cullum managed to record tracks strong enough that they actually made the new album, Catching Tales.

Its single, Get Your Way, is getting saturation airplay in some markets, including Denver (where the pianist performs tonight at the Ogden Theatre). Cullum chortles because, while he was on hold, his song was playing.

"It's peculiar to the states, actually. It's something that people dig over there, which is great. It was always one of those tracks that could cross a lot of different boundaries and genres," Cullum says.

While the success of Twentysomething - his third album - gave him access to more musicians than he'd had in the past, "I completely avoided those temptations," he says. "I was lucky enough to be working with great musicians before, and I decided to stay with them."

Musician Ed Harcourt is a new addition to his sound, however.

"He's a friend from down the road. He lives nearby. We get on, we're good mates. We hang out - and when you hang out with Ed, you tend to get drunk. So we made some music together," he says.

The jazzy inflections of Twentysomething aren't as apparent to some ears on the new album. Cullum disagrees that he's gone in a more pop direction; if anything, the new album is more of a mix of sounds.

"For me it felt more like a return to where I've come from. I guess on Twentysomething you get a jazz song and a pop song. On this new album everything's more integrated," he says. "Photograph starts out like some singer-songwriter-piano man thing. It's got a big rock chorus, then there's a big Latin-jazz piano solo in the middle. Get Your Way sounds like an old-school hip-hop track that has Cole Porter lyrics and a piano solo in the middle. There's actually more of me improvising on this album. The band is smaller; there are no horns. It's mainly a trio with a few adornments. There's a lot more of me improvising on piano. For me it's more of a jazz album than the last one."

Relentless touring has been a big part of Cullum's success, especially stateside. It has its grueling moments, he says, but he can live with it.

"It's certainly not easy. But at 26 years old with no ties, it's a good laugh. I can drink in a different bar every night and meet a bunch of different people, and I can (go) off to another city before I get in any trouble," he says with a laugh. "It's pretty fun when you're on a bus with your friends and play music every night."

And he's considering taking a cue from Big Head Todd & the Monsters, who recently began simply giving away new music through their Web site rather than selling it.

"I've probably written and recorded seven or eight new songs just for my own amusement. I'm looking forward to giving away a load of tracks," Cullum says. "I'm really interested in the idea of just putting tracks out there. My record company will probably hunt me down and shoot me, but it really levels the playing field."

Mark Brown is the popular music critic. Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2674