Brad: bad shirt, wonderful player

Some might suggest that such attention to a jazz musician's get-up outs me as something of a lunatic.

That's undeniably true, but the thought of the shirt's undeniable garishness and the idea that it represents a flaw in Mehldau comforts me in my lunacy because he is just too damn good a musician.

I've been listening to his playing a lot recently and he has managed to carve himself a space of his own - no mean feat.

Okay, there are glimpses of Jarrett in some of his runs and of Ahmad Jamal in the way he uses space, but you could hear a snatch of a solo and know it was him.

His originality also comes, perversely, in the songs he chooses to cover.

I love the way he has raided modern popular music to create arrangements for his trio.

His choices are always intelligent and don't simply impose jazz traditions on the songs - you always feel the embers of the original burning.

Mehldau's Wonderwall still has some of Liam Gallagher's swagger and the melodies of the Radiohead tunes are played with all that playful timing that Thom Yorke favours.

He is a quite brilliant musician and the same can be said for his bandmates Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard.

Has anyone in a two-tone shirt ever been this good?