Caustic Love by Paolo Nutini

Caustic Love is being sold as some old time sexy r'n'b to get down and jiggy to. I listened thinking Paolo Nutini was the new electric warrior only to be disappointed that there was no baby making music to be found. At least no good baby making music. The best tracks here are all long and melodramatic, which may lead you to the conclusion that Nutini is having a bit of an image problem.

This is nothing new for Nutini: his last album release was in 2009 and I doubt even back then I was the only one a little confused at what the guy was going for. He had the tuneful sense of fun of a pop star only stuck in the body of a folk singer playing rock and ska songs. His best songs were always enthusiastic pop but even that didn't seem worthy of his talents. Neither does the r'n'b on Caustic Love: album opener Scream (Funk My Life Up) feels like a build up that doesn't go anywhere. It's certainly smooth but lacks the lightning precision of the guitars that backed up Marc Bolan.

As I said: it's the longer more ambitious numbers that are the highlights here. I originally mistook these for lil Pauly Nutini going all pompous on us - like 6 minute Iron Sky, a melodramatic rocker which opens (not un-modestly) with the line "We are proud individuals living on the city/But the flames couldn’t go much higher" and even drives its revolution-on-the-mind message with a mid-song recording of a British war time broadcaster. It certainly wasn't what I went in wanting from the album but after a few listens it became clear Nutini's real talent lies in these bigger numbers. The slowly building guitars and fairly complex arrangements are given a chance to breath in these songs.

On the emotional highlight of the album One Day, an old time soul number, Nutini stretches his vocal cords out more than anywhere else. He shrieks lines like "I'll be gone in a while" with enough power that you almost believe it. Later, on playful but forgettable track Numpty, he sings "now that I'm young", aging backwards just one sign of the Hendrix-esque otherworldliness that hangs over the album. Songs spiral onto the speakers as if from some sort of chemical void.

Nutini sums up his own album at one point with the line "there's more to life than sex appeal/but sometimes it takes an angel to remember it". The Nutini on Caustic Love seems more masculine; compared to on his previous albums this Nutini seems older by a few trips around the world and at least one life re-evaluating heartbreak. Nutini really has found something here: a world-weary purpose in the music. If only he'd made the whole album without the sex appeal.