Album review: Paolo Nutini

PAOLO NUTINI: SUNNY SIDE UP

****

ATLANTIC £12.72

PAOLO Nutini's second album will come as a surprise to anyone who has consigned him to the same MOR slagheap as Jameses Morrison and Blunt, or who expected him simply to consolidate the success of his two million-selling debut, These Streets, with more of the same, slick, blue-eyed soul pop. But it will be less unexpected to any-one who paid attention to his warm endorsement by the late, legendary Atlantic Records boss Ahmet Ertegun, and to those who have kept an eye on Nutini's interviews, where he waxes soulful on his diverse and ancient influences.

Though a pop pin-up to many, Nutini is a musician through and through, and an old head on young shoulders to boot. All his musical heroes hail from his parents' – even his grandparents' – generation. Aged 22, he has already sung with many of them, sharing stages with legends such as Ben E King, Solomon Burke, Quincy Jones, Robert Plant and the Rolling Stones, while paying just as much respect to the session men who played on their original recordings as he does to the names in lights.

So, having established himself as a commercial concern and won some creative leeway, he gets to indulge his tastes and tick off all those old school references on Sunny Side Up, embracing soul, folk, reggae and ragtime. Initially, Nutini was so determined to hang on to control of this album that he planned to produce it himself, but, in the end, he went with Kings of Leon producer Ethan Johns – who just happens to be the son of legendary Beatles/Stones/Who producer Glyn Johns, and knows a thing or two about classic musical lineage.

Slipping free of his safety net, Nutini has now made the album he wants to make, one that reflects his influences – in some places, it just flat-out imitates them – but, more than that, impresses with his ability to assimilate such a range of retro styles into a strong, melodic set of songs.

The sunny ska pop pastiche of opener 10/10 is a charming surprise, which really suits Nutini's mature timbre, even if it is a little Jools Holland in the execution (Holland collaborator Rico Rodriguez actually guests on brass). Its bouncy arrangement is complemented with playful lyrics, as Nutini strives for approval as a suitor, desiring to "be a model pupil tonight …get an A in the taxi, an A in the restaurant, an A in the kitchen, an A in the bedroom".

With its warm organ licks and economical parp of Memphis horns, Coming Up Easy doffs its cap to Sam Cooke and vintage southern soul, and Nutini gets to show off his vocal skills with his most intuitive, freestyle delivery yet. Although the song is "about bad habits and breaking up", it's an uplifting jam overall.

The general positivity persists through the finger-clicking soul calypso number High Hopes, though Nutini sounds about 100 years old when he declares "we need a moral education to set the young minds free".

No Other Way is a moodier, broodier, barnstorming rhythm 'n' blues ballad, though more of a pastiche than song. Having been refreshingly candid in the past about the pressures of sudden fame, Nutini could have written a whole album about the downside of life on the road but, on this occasion, he confines himself to this tour-bus blues.

Preferring instead to look to the emotional comfort of home for his inspiration, he celebrates the bare necessities ("I got food in my belly, and a license for my telly") on Pencil Full Of Lead, a brazen bash at a Louis Prima ragtime swing number on which he and his band, the Vipers, have a ball. He returns to the same theme later, on the skiffly Simple Things, which was inspired by his father's contentment with a simple life.

Growing Up Beside You is another expression of utter contentment, this time with a Nick Drake-like flavour. There are other forays into folky territory such as the Celtic-flavoured Tricks Of The Trade, 60s-inspired folk troubadour number Chamber Music and classic country folk ballad Worried Man, with its mariachi horns and swooning strings.

It's all wide-eyed, refreshing stuff. Only the current single, Candy, strays close to the mellow pop of Nutini's debut, and even mines similar lyrical territory to Last Request. But it is also one of the most consummately beautiful, yearning songs on the album.

He rounds off this collection with Keep Rolling, a gentle, melancholic coda which, in his 22-going-on-62 way, sounds like a soothing old Bing Crosby lullaby. Like much of the preceding content, it is prematurely aged, yet resoundingly convincing. With Sunny Side Up, Nutini has not quite achieved the Winehousesque synthesis of the old school and present times (and probably wasn't trying to), but he has surely demonstrated his comprehensive musical chops.