Today's cd/These Streets

Paolo Nutini
These Streets
2006

What a wonderful album this is. Paolo Nutini is such a good writer and singer. I hear hints of Simply Red, and going back further, a little Marvin Gaye. He is very soulful in his music and words. Sometimes in a song a phrase will jump out at me and I'll think, how perfect. He is asking a woman to grant him a last request (before she leaves) and he says,

don't shrug your shoulders

I like that. It is just right. It is exactly what a disinterested, already-out-the-door person would do. 'Oh, okay, but then I'm gone' sort of gesture.

He sings of love, and those "New Shoes", and about leaving home.

cross the border, into the big bad world
where it takes you 'bout an hour just to cross the road

these streets have too many names for me
I'm used to Glenfield Road and spending my time down in Orchy
I'll get used to this eventually I know, I know

I like the way he personalizes a common experience. Most of us have been through it. Some stay on "those streets" and others come back home. When we are young, we just live through the days, unthinking, unknowing that change is coming. Then it hits us in our early twenties:

where'd days go when all we did was play
and the stress we were under wasn't stress at all

The insert has a photo of his late grandparents, and beside it are the lyrics to "Autumn."

I can hear you saying
my little fish don't cry, my little fish don't cry

Again, he puts in a personal phrase like that, a loving name, which brings it right home to all of us who have lost those in an older generation.

The songs are pensive, bouncy, humorous, deep. I just love this album and can't recommend it highly enough. You may learn more about this young man, and listen to some songs, here and here.