You may not be leaving your own postcode this summer, but Jack Savoretti’s Europiana will make you feel as if you’ve got away from it all
Jack Savoretti Europiana Out Friday
How do you like your albums: consistent all the way through, like a stew, or full of variety, like a sharing platter?
There are a few famous LPs that don’t care about coherence. Look at Sgt Pepper: one minute you’re in the music hall with Mr Kite, the next you’re listening to a lecture on Hindu philosophy.
It’s still a great record – as is Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black, which leans the other way, with every track cut from the same cloth.
After reaching No 1 with his sixth album, Singing To Strangers, Jack Savoretti (above) is using his hard-won artistic freedom to give the follow-up not one distinct personality but two
Jack Savoretti has come up with a novel solution to this eternal dilemma. After reaching No 1 with his sixth album, Singing To Strangers, he is using his hard-won artistic freedom to give the follow-up not one distinct personality but two.
Several songs on Europiana carry on where its predecessor left off, with a sound so lush and romantic that you wonder if the backing tracks were recorded in Venice in 1957.
Others appear to have come straight from a New York disco 20 years later. And Savoretti mixes them all up.
Now 37, he is not short of confidence. On the last album he shared a writing credit with Bob Dylan; this time he ropes in Nile Rodgers, the doyen of the disco. Who’s Hurting Who gleams with the glossy confidence that Rodgers brought to Madonna’s Like A Virgin and Bowie’s Let’s Dance.
In both his modes, Savoretti favours instant choruses and big emotions. His voice, while forever rasping, is not as throaty as it used to be. His touring band sound as if they’re having a ball.
And his lyrics, especially on the sweeping ballad War Of Words, are heartfelt, with the odd shaft of wisdom.
The whole album exudes a longing for Europe, which comes straight from the genes – Savoretti, a Londoner now living in Oxfordshire with his wife and children, has an Italian father and a German-Polish mother.
It also chimes with the times. You may not be leaving your own postcode this summer, but Europiana will make you feel as if you’ve got away from it all.