PAULO NUTINI - LAST NIGHT IN THE BITTERSWEET

So, I never took Paulo Nutini seriously. Oh I liked the catchy novelty of Pencil Full of Lead but I never considered him as a serious writer.

Last Night In The Bittersweet however has all my attention. I stuck Children Of The Stars and Shine A Light on a family travel playlist and was mesmerised by them particularly Shine A Light that has this late 60s psychedelic blues groove that I cannot get enough of.

The entire album indeed sounds like Nuntini’s Exile On Main Street sprawling to 16 songs of across genre and vibe. There’s that soul voice on the yearning Through The Echoes, there’s a nod to Irish contemporaries Fontaines DC on the spoken word Lose It. There’s 70’s New York new wave energies of Petrified In Love. Still in New York, there is the hypnotic near Velvet Underground heavy groove of Everywhere. Then there is Julianne, the beautiful piano ballad.

Nutini seems a thoughtful young man. He’s not claiming to have  any answers but he seems to be keen to go deep in the questions. He declares himself in the final track, Writer, as some conduit to all our surmising. On these 16 tracks he does it so well.

 

I am your writer who bleeds indecision

Your lover, your waiter, your saddest addition

Your fighter, your taker, your old patience breaker

Your mover, your shaker

The one who can make you feel like a giant in the morning

And so little by noon

For sure drowning in the sunrise and you froze on the moon