For Invisible Cinema, his much-admired 2008 Blue Note debut, Seattle-born Aaron Parks was welcomed as a rising piano star – as the title reflected, a composer who often seemed to be playing the soundtrack to a movie running in his head. He has also been a creative sideman for guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, for Joshua Redman, and on scores for Spike Lee – but a compositional, working-band follow-up to Invisible Cinema has been 11 years on the back burner, until now. Little Big features an electric/acoustic band and a mix of contemporary fusion, psychedelia, folk music, neo-soul and jazz. The album's predominantly hook-rooted, languidly grooving vibe is unveiled with the jazz-rockish mid-tempo opener ‘Kid’ and its shapely, earthy electric guitar break from Greg Tuohey. Parks' pop-jazzy melodic ear and light touch guide some of the set's most attractive passages – like the lovely country-folksy sway of ‘Lilac’, the romantic-movie dreamwalk of ‘Siren’, and the almost ‘Shenandoah’-like feel of ‘Hearth’. But, though drummer Tommy Crane (whose relaxation with mind-bending meter-mixes is startling on the studio jam, ‘Professor Strangeweather’) and quick-thinking bassist David Ginyard are powerful participants, and the leader's acoustic solos maintain their old improv fluency, Little Big may be too generic and groove-dictated an enterprise for jazz listeners in search of a few more tingles to the spine.