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 Paolo Nutini found success with his very first CD — but it didn't paralyze him when it came to writing his sophomore album. |
TORONTO -- Paolo Nutini’s 2006 record, "These Streets," was one of the most buzzed-about debuts this decade.
But even if his soulful tunes hadn't got tongues wagging straight out of the gate, his plan for winning over fans would have been the same.
"When I was starting out, I said to my bandmates, 'Let's gig our asses off,'" the Scottish singer says.
"So maybe commercially that album was successful," he adds, before taking the stage at the Opera House, "but that word-of-mouth thing is what you want as a musician."
He spliced breezy bits of Strokes-y rock between raspy Cat Stevens-like snippets of heartbreak and quickly turned himself into a must-see live act, appearing at numerous festivals and landing a coveted opening spot at Led Zeppelin's one-off reunion at London's O2 Arena.
"People were coming to shows and meeting me after saying, 'I came with my girlfriend,' or 'I only came because I got given a ticket.' But in both cases they said, 'I'll be back.'
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"Listening to the live shows was making a better impact than the album was."
But after two years on the road, the 22-year-old found that his musical ambitions had outgrown his live incarnation.
"I felt like I'd been bathing in music for the last seven, eight years,” he says, slipping Rodriguez' little-known "Coming From Reality" into his CD player. "And now I had some ideas I wanted to expand on with the boys."
Improvisation in the studio led to the jazzy, blues-rock hybrid that makes up most of Nutini's recently-released second disc, "Sunny Side Up."
"I've seen a lot of references in magazines that infer this record is an obvious show that I'm trying to separate myself from other artists that I've been lumped with, or that this is an attempt for me to try and be taken seriously," he says.
"As much as that is in the back of my mind, it was a very relaxed thing making this record."
Emboldened by his "varied" fan base, Nutuni flirts equally with graveled balladry ("Candy," "Tricks of the Trade," "Coming Up Easy") and bouncy bits of ska and ragtime ("10/10," "Pencil Full of Lead") on the new disc.
Nutini knows even if his extra-curricular antics aren't Amy Winehouse headline-worthy, critics have been eager to characterize him as just another blue-eyed soul singer.
"It's a weird place to be," he admits. "There are times when you feel like you've achieved something and you feel good, but it can go two ways," he says, slapping a fist into his palm to illustrate some of the critical barbs that have been lobbed his way.
"But I remember how [Bob] Dylan said, 'If there were no songs written tomorrow, there's more than you could even imagine out there ready to push all your buttons in different ways.'"
Sliding up to his CD player, Nutini turns Rodriguez up and points out the ways in which his songs play like a distant relative to Carole King's "Tapestry."
"See," he says, mock strumming, singing bits of "I Think of You," "there are only so many cards and so many ways to put them together."
Paolo Nutini performs at Day One of Toronto's Virgin Festival on Saturday, August 29.
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