There is an article this week on the Scotsman by Fiona Shepherd reviewing Paolo Nutini’s long awaited third studio album -- Caustic Love.
The album is not due for release for another week or so BUT there is a link here over on itunes that is working (at least for the moment) which allows you to stream the complete album …. it won’t be there for long so hurry, hurry, hurry.
Paolo Nutini -- Iron Sky [Abbey Road Live Session]
PAOLO Nutini has always kept company with older folks. As a teenager, he played in bands with more senior musicians, was influenced by his grandfather’s taste in music and acquired a reputation as an old soul even as he was emerging as a reluctant pop star.
Now aged 27, he has grown into those influences and, five years on from his last multi-platinum adventure, returns with this carefully wrought collection of soulful slowburners. The ghosts of Curtis Mayfield, Sam Cooke and John Martyn all loom large as Nutini ponders his place in his personal circle and the wider world.
Scream (Funk My Life Up), his blues funk hymn to a dream girl, has already achieved pre-release ubiquity but, in the context of the rest of the album, it’s a piece of disposable, pastichey fun. Let Me Down Easy takes its sultry cue from a nicely integrated Bettye LaVette sample, which Nutini treats as an invitation to duet. “We are broken by others but we mend ourselves,” muses our slacker sage before moving on to the challenges of commitment on mellow rhythm’n’blues track Numpty.
Laid-back mood established, Nutini injects a bit of Caledonia soul into brooding ballad Better Man, sitting back comfortably on the soft cushioning provided by his expert players, while the supremely soulful sashay of One Day is a blissful mix of peace and melancholy.
Fashion blatantly borrows the industrial funk groove from the Bowie song of the same name – if you are going to copy, you might as well copy the best – while the psych rock-influenced Cherry Blossom continues the push into new territory. It’s clear by now that Caustic Love is another leap forward for the restless musician after the infectious mixtape approach of Sunny Side Up.
But you ain’t heard nothing yet. Noble centrepiece Iron Sky is an epic six-minute slice of conscious soul, topped with trembling strings, swelling brass, tremolo guitar, ghostly soprano backing vocals and Charlie Chaplin’s resonant, rousing speech from The Great Dictator, which is way ahead of anything Nutini has done to date. Yet he holds that benchmark with Diana, a moody piece of soul funk, the likes of which hasn’t caressed the charts since the heyday of Soul II Soul.
As if allowing the listener time to process what they have just heard, he ends on the simple, direct and utterly lovely doo-wop number Someone Like You. Apparently, this album represents just a fraction of his new material. After this audacious comeback, Nutini can go anywhere he pleases. -- FIONA SHEPHERD -- source -- scotsman
You can stream ‘Caustic Love’ in full exclusively on iTunes it’s also available to pre-order here
