Sunny Side Up

Album Review

When Scot singer/songwriter Paolo Nutini issued his debut album in 2006 — all of its songs were written before his 18th birthday — there was no doubt, despite his youthful demeanor, that he was the real thing. He stood out from the 21st century plague of the young, confessional songwriting throng because of his unusual depth, canny melodic sensibility, and homemade but taut production. His singles, "New Shoes," and "Jenny Don't Be Hasty," were wrapped in rock & roll classicism and bore the attitude of Dion's "Teenager in Love" and the romanticism of Jonathan Richman's "That Summer Feeling." With Sunny Side Up, his sophomore effort, Nutini makes a giant leap forward. Not only has he moved a few levels north in terms of his use of harmony, melody, and broadening genres, his lyrics have gotten bolder and more sophisticated. With the help of Ethan Johns, Nutini has taken huge chunks of America's (and Scotland's) pop and folk pasts and reshaped them in his own image; he's all but left his previous identity behind.

Nutini recorded and produced the original sessions himself with his band the Vipers — Donny Little, Mike McCaid, Dave Nelson, Seamus Simon, Gavin Fitzjohn, and Fraser Speirs — and Johns added some production details and did a load of mixing. In addition, there are guests that include a string quartet, the legendary Rico Rodriguez of the Skatalites and Specials, and ?uestlove of the Roots who helps out on the album opener "10/10." Though this cut is not the single, it is one of the grandest moments here. As an opener, "10/10,'" is indispensable: a ska heavy soul beat with blazing brass is laid down, as Nutini delivers a vocal that is the perfect meld of Louis Prima and Bob Marley. Its lyric captures the solid swaggering joy and braggadocio of the street with a melody that screams "party time." "Coming Up Easy," is one of the set's featured tracks and as such, with its soulful Memphis-style Hammond B-3, Duck Dunn-style bassline, and fat horns by Fitzjohn, is a killer breakup track, but with a lyric that could have been written by Nick Drake. It's tight, tough, and moving. The set's first single is "Candy," which opens with an Omnichord by Johns (who also plays mellotron and another guitar on the cut). This one feels a lot like John Martyn. It's not an ape, but since both were Scotsmen, the lineage is there, and both borrowed from American blues and folk heritages as well as their Celtic ones. This is a gorgeous, if unlikely, single with acoustic guitars weaving around the mix like water falling around Nutini's Scottish brogue. It's a love song of the first order without an ounce of sap, and containing a poetry so impure it could only be pop music. The rest of Sunny Side Up holds water, too. It's remarkably consistent as it embraces Scottish folk ("Tricks of the Trade,"and "Worried Man"), swing jazz ("Pencil Full of Lead"), early rock and doo wop ("No Other Way"), calypso soul ("High Hopes"), skiffle-style country ("Simple Things"), and even late-'30s style crooning ("Keep Rolling"). All of these stylistic indulgences could have turned up as a mess, a bad mash-up or still worse, an album full of songs that were longer on style than they were on substance. That's not the case; it's almost unbelievably sophisticated, flows easily, and feels whole, finished. This one leaves its generational competition in the dust and is wise beyond this songwriter's years, and to be frank, leaves his own previous identity as simply a bedroom balladeer to history.