Paolo Nutini is the teenage star whom no one has ever patronized. He recorded his first album, These Streets, when he was 19, having already made a name in numerous live performances with musicians far beyond his young age – of them he got knowledge and inspiration. Over the following eight years Paolo Nutini recorded only one studio album - Sunny Side Up, but his connection with the concert stage allowed his ever-growing crowd of admirers to track his progress through one full-length and many short-play - in the true sense of the word - research albums he recorded live. Meanwhile he amassed influence, fans and expectations. All of these, he brilliantly rewards with his third studio LP Caustic Love.
With millions of copies of multi-platinum albums sold, Paolo Nutini, now 27, can afford anything - especially: to be honest, to be innovative, to risk being authentic, to surpass new frontiers of talent and imagination. The music base again is rhythm and blues, with the added flavour of soul and funk, and there are some very special moments here - the virtual duet with Bettye LaVette, whose voice he sampled on the song Let Me Down Easy, and Charlie Chaplin's words from The Great Dictator in Iron Sky, echoing with the belief that we must live through to the happiness we deserve. We thus witness a new level of maturity in life and art that Paolo Nutini demonstrates with the knowledge that in the uncertain world of the music scene today the only possible way forward is to be yourself. Caustic Love is very personal and soul-searching.
Often do such insightful albums enable us to reach unexplored areas of our inner world. Caustic Love surprises - it does not directly prompt us to look inside ourselves but offers us to live with the heart of the musician those very important emotions: love, faith, fear, salvation, freedom.
