Eight years is a lengthy period of time in the life of a musician; but in that span, Paolo Nutini crafted an expansive fourth album fit to follow his previous release, 2014’s Caustic Love. Finally ready to return, he brings a new record entitled Last Night in the Bittersweet, and its 70-minute runtime is a luxury for those who have been waiting for the Scottish musician to release another work. Nutini’s sold-out night at Boston’s Royale club is only the second date on his ensuing US tour of 2023, following a winding European itinerary that spanned the better part of last year. The show begins in the same way as the album, with a bit of atmosphere-building in the form of ‘Afterneath’, the driving, locked groove soundtracked by equal parts of Nutini’s faraway screams as well as Arab Strap-esque baritone brooding in sprechgesang, all of the above twisting around a Quentin Tarantino-penned sample spliced from the film True Romance.
As its opening telegraphs, Bittersweet is arguably Nutini’s most varied work yet, and the broad age range in the crowd demonstrates his ability to pique the ears of nigh on anyone. ‘Lose It’, an ode to a measure of willful forgetfulness, strikes a similar tone to ‘Afterneath’ initially, but softens into a bed of synthesizers and soaring backing vocals as it presses on, whereas ‘Scream’ and its refrain of “funk my life up” delve deep into the bluesier corners of Nutini’s career, also marking the night’s first look back to Caustic Love. That album is a whirlwind of vintage style merging with modern accentuation, like in the slinky old-club beat of ‘Let Me Down Easy’ or the notable feature from an Electric Lady-era Janelle Monáe. The night calls for a wealth of instrumental changes, saxophones to synths, and Nutini’s voice is just as versatile, from the delicate regret in his higher register on ‘Acid Eyes’ to the sheer power that can erupt on a moment’s notice as in songs like ‘Cherry Blossom’, where his roar is raw and gravelly.
While it hails from his most recent effort rather than Caustic Love as the title might otherwise suggest, ‘Acid Eyes’ is another song that finds Nutini fixated on the volatile risks of love and intimacy, those interpersonal connections the source of such wild heights and sullen lows. “There’s nothing on the radio / they’re all talkin’ like they’re falling in love” he says next during ‘Radio’, his left hand raised above his head to match the lyrics, striking the air beside him in time with the tripartite power chords that accompany his staggered repetition of “I want love!”. There’s a desperation he evokes through each line, hard-pressed to coexist with even something so innocuous as the saccharine tales of radio rock.
The midsection of the evening sees things slow down slightly, with Nutini picking up his acoustic guitar for ‘Through the Echoes’. In its patient way the song sets his vocals front and center, and when he asks, “Listen for me,” the ensuing refrains of the song’s title feel like they could dispel any whirling din and find their way straight to their intended ear. The trend continues as more than half of the seven-piece band depart the stage for the next song, ‘Coming Up Easy’, from Nutini’s sophomore album Sunny Side Up. Though he was but 22 at the time of its release, and it is chiefly a playful song thinly anthropomorphizing his relationship with marijuana, he espouses a life philosophy here that is noble in its simplicity: “it was in love I was created and in love his how I hope I die” – a closed loop that is perhaps one of the most pleasant outcomes to which one might aspire.
When the band has returned to the stage in full, they circle back once again to Caustic Love with ‘Cherry Blossom’ and its conflicting imagery of new blooms and black crows, once again mining the fraught and contradictory nature of relationships. That song melts noisily into its thematic sibling ‘Petrified in Love’, guitar and singular synth recalling something situated between American heartland rock and mid-80s Dire Straits, influences which persist into a reworked version of Sunny Side Up standout ‘Pencil Full of Lead’. He’s traded the swing and the muted trumpet of the recorded version for a snarling rock side grade, and while there’s liable to be ample debate as to which version is preferable among listeners, the live rendition is much more cohesive in this setlist, his refrain of “best of all, I’ve got my baby” becoming a triumphant coda befitting a song placed in the final stretch of the main set. Nutini has nested yet more of his enduring hits in this third act, including ‘Candy’, where he’s as powerfully convincing of his devotion as he is of his need, and finally ‘Everywhere’: an unchained emotional outpouring backed by a warbling organ sound. Recalling Robert Plante and the like once again, Nutini’s screams here resonate at a frequency that reaches in and unfailingly captivates the deepest chambers of the heart.
Following the traditional encore-break chanting of the man’s name to the immortal riff from The White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army’, the band begins the final trio of songs with the heavy bass line of ‘Iron Sky’. The song is Nutini at his most orchestral and cinematic, and he kneels onstage during the midsection of the song as an excerpt from Charlie Chaplin’s evergreen monologue in The Great Dictator plays, accentuating the political centerpiece of Caustic Love’s message as much as possible. The lyrics make the case that this track holds the album’s name most closely to its message, as he makes the call for people to rise “over love, over hate” – a hard truth that love of something, such as the past, can turn as sour as outright venom.
The band’s final song in ensemble is ‘Shine a Light’, whose rounded bass tone and celestial synths create a quintessential anthemic structure, an uplifting note on which to part – or so it seems until the lights fail to come up even as the band has taken their collective bow. But Paolo remains and snags his acoustic one final time to close this night just as he did Last Night in the Bittersweet, with ‘Writer’. In its relative quiet, made all the more stark by the accompanying silence that envelopes the whole of the room, it sits undeniably among the most powerful pieces from the album and the evening. The wisdom of a bit of age, the knowledge that oftentimes there’s nothing more to be said or done between two people – when laid side-by-side with such artifacts of memory, simultaneously so personal and universal – even the quietest song, too, can reach the innermost part of the heart, where Nutini’s music settles so often.
by Collin Heroux and Kathleen Hay