Interview: Paolo Nutini - A sunny disposition

Published on Friday 29 May 2009 21:20

RAIN is hammering against the grey columns of Aberdeen's Music Hall, where a large queue of determined Paolo Nutini fans are attempting to take shelter, three hours before the 22-year-old singer from Paisley is due to take the stage. Nutini's monster of a tour bus is parked at the back door, and two young women are braving the bad weather to circle it excitedly, in the hope of catching a glimpse of their idol.

What they don't know is that Nutini, currently on a UK tour, is seeking refuge in a coffee shop just a few feet away. It's been nearly three years since the release of his million-selling debut album, These Streets, during which time he's played with the Rolling Stones, supported Led Zeppelin, won the support of everyone from Jools Holland to Rod Stewart, and found the time to pen that difficult second album – Sunny Side Up – which he's here to talk to me about.

Drumming at the top of his can of San Pellegrino and tapping both feet along to the same inaudible beat, Paolo Nutini is an energetic young man, yet has a laid-back calm about him. He is strikingly handsome, but seems to have grown into his looks since he first appeared on the scene as a boyish teenager.

Wearing a checked shirt open over a white vest that's so low and loose that, when he leans forward, I can almost see his belly button beyond an expanse of chest hair, Nutini's strong features and olive skin hint at his Italian roots (his family have lived in Scotland for four generations, but his father is of Italian descent). The hair's still a little rebellious, but he no longer hides behind a long fringe, favouring a messy crop that exposes a pair of almond-shaped eyes with languid lids.

That he doesn't maintain eye contact for long might imply a certain stand-offishness, but – on the contrary – he's so immediately open and engaging that I cannot help remarking on it.

"I dunno, maybe some journalists just fool me into it," he laughs. "Maybe I just get a bit comfortable and then I start blabbering on. But there's nothing I really have to hide. I've had people telling me about interview techniques, how to assert my voice at the right time, how to manipulate an interview and maximise what you want to get; is that what you'd want?"

No, no, I assure him; it was a compliment. "Ah, sweet. An interview goes a lot easier if we just start having a conversation about old Eighties American kids' films," he says, before reeling off a list of some of his favourites (Rocky, Rambo, The Sandlot and The Goonies, in case you're wondering). Whoever cajoled him into media training would surely be sweating by this point: he wants to go over the finer points of the Rocky theme tune, I want to discuss his new album. With a little work, however, we get back on track.

Sunny Side Up might be neatly described as Nutini's coming-of-age album. He wrote many of the songs on These Streets (including his debut hit single, Last Request) when he was in his mid-teens and, understandably, he brings a rather different perspective to his new material.

In These Streets, Nutini drew on universal themes: love, sex and, um, the uplifting feeling one experiences when pounding pavement in a new pair of shoes. He sang of the agony of a relationship in its death throes, the loneliness of moving to a big city for the first time and the perils of lying about your age.

Sunny Side Up offers a more mature take on similarly broad themes. There's a strong, bluesy edge to it, but it's an album packed with diverse influences, from ska – on 10/10 and Pencil Full of Lead – to country, on Simple Things. Nutini's ragged, whisky-saturated voice skims effortlessly across the tracks, with a solemn wisdom beyond his 22 years.

Indeed, he has been described as something of an "old soul", a label that can be applied both to a remarkable voice that seems to have spent the best part of 50 years sipping bourbon in a smoky jazz bar and to the way in which he chooses to shun a lifestyle most men his age would embrace with open arms.

"That's the conflict right there," he says, when I ask him about his experiences of fame. "I'm not a famous guy in the sense that I'm not running with the fame. I'm not focusing on that kind of lifestyle. All you are is … a lot of people know who you are, and that's about it. The only time it bothers me is when I can't comprehend it, when I can't get what's going on around me to the point where I can't then structure normal life around it."

The perils of fame, however, reach beyond being recognised when nipping out for a pint of milk. In the past few years Nutini has been "airbrushed to the point of no return" in more ways than one. As a young artist enjoying both critical and commercial success, his image has been carefully controlled, from promo shots that play up his pretty features to the production on his first album (which he thinks he might re-record in the future, "for fun").

"Image is something I'm too fussed about, to be honest. I just don't like other people putting forward a direct statement of who I am (when they] really don't have a clue. You'd go to photoshoots and people would bring along a rack of clothes, get you to try them on and take a couple of photos. They'd end up being the ones they use and you look stupid in this f***ing thing that you would never wear in a million years," he says, with heightening frustration. "But then, you know, it all gets attached (to me] and it means absolutely nothing."

This time round he's learned to take a bit more control. "The first year (of fame] it was fine," he says. "After two years it got … it didn't feel like I was going with this thing; it felt like all of a sudden this was it, this was real life, and I wasn't too keen on that. Feeling like you're that guy attached to that song… you almost felt like that was your purpose. I just didn't feel it was what I should be spending that much time on and resigning (myself] to that. Now I feel a lot more on my feet. This time I'm moving at the same pace as everything else around me." As is so often the case, Nutini's pretty face is something of a double-edged sword. It ensures a certain quota of young female fans (like the ones currently pacing round his tour bus), but it also tars him with the same brush as other attractive male singer-songwriters (he's been compared, rather unfairly, to James Blunt in the past), regardless of the standard of the music he's making.

"I don't know what it implies, if that's what you cater for. I can't imagine… you know, look at the state of me!" he says modestly, tugging at his shirt and laughing, as if he can't quite believe what all the fuss is about. "(But] every time I sit and watch any of my favourite bands from the Sixties, there are screaming girls everywhere. That's fine as long as it's (balanced] out by people who actually listen and have something to say about music. After shows, you know, there's a lot of people who want a photo, but at the same time there's a lot of people who have a lot of nice stuff to say, who make stabs in the dark as to where a song has come from and actually hit the mark sometimes. That's quite cool."

Does he have any regrets? "I dunno, I might have thought twice before singing about shoes, but then again I might not," he says. "Perhaps… I could have got a hell of a lot more done, taken a hell of a lot more in over the past few years, I wish I'd listened a lot more in school, I wish I'd opened my mind up a little bit more that little bit sooner." There's that openness again. He has a tendency to think carefully about his answers, not so as to deliver a polished, publicist-honed soundbite, but rather to give the most honest response he can. However, he can be as vague as he is open, if not necessarily intentionally. He talks a lot, but doesn't edit what he says, which can be rather charming.

A case in point is his slightly embarrassed, rambling answer when asked about the upside to fame: "Of course there's (an] upside. Most people that know me, if I wanted to go somewhere and I'm in London for a night and there's a nice place to go eat and you phone and it's fully booked then, most of the time, whoever you're with will be like, why don't you get somebody to phone up and say who's coming? But I never, and sometimes somebody will phone and try, but it just depends on who's picking up the phone that night."

I don't get the impression that it's Nutini himself who's keen on using his name to get a table in a restaurant, or anything else for that matter. The trappings of fame seem to sit a little uneasily with him, but he's far too gracious to let his fans know it: when we part ways in the rain, I turn to watch him scurrying back to his tour bus. The two by now rather damp young women can't quite believe their luck and trot after him, hoping to get a photograph. He is, of course, happy to oblige.

&#149 Sunny Side Up is released on Monday.

&#149 Paolo Nutini will be performing and signing autographs on Monday at HMV in Buchanan Street, Glasgow, from 1-2:30pm and at HMV Picture House in Edinburgh from 7:30pm.