Paolo Nutini: Last night in the bittersweet (Atlantic Ocean)
Verdict: Strong, if erratic, return
Regina Spector: Home, Before and After (Warner)
Rating: 
Verdict: Where the heart is
UB40 vt. Ali Campbell and Astro: Unknown (UMC)
Rating: 
Verdict: Sun-kiss reggae bliss
The day when someone comes up with an award for the latest man in music, Paolo Nutini will be shortlisted.
Unaware of the commercial imperatives that inspire so many singer-songwriters, he moves at his own, leisurely pace.
His latest album is his first in more than eight years. The Glaswegian is a rarity – a leading pop star seemingly without ego. Since hitting the charts with his third album, Caustic Love, in 2014, he has reportedly written hundreds of songs that he kept to himself, raising fears that his indifference to fame and fortune could lead him to his to squander considerable talent.
At 35, he has land to make up. Since we last heard from him, his more motivated peers have carved out lucrative careers. George Ezra has released three albums and Ed Sheeran, the personification of a highly driven artist, celebrates.
The day when someone comes up with an award for the latest man in music, Paolo Nutini will be shortlisted
A lack of ambition should not be confused with a lack of ability, and Nutini throws everything – sometimes too much – into this return. Alongside his usual, blue-eyed soul ballads, there is humming electronics and bath-pounding, industrial rock.
This is a record that dispels any idea that he wants to be a pop pin-up.
At first, you even begin to wonder if he has completely said goodbye to his sentences.
The opening track Afterneath is a sloppy mix of clapping cymbals and crying chorus. It’s not a promising start, but he’s back to familiar territory soon with soft rocker Radio and soft ballad Through The Echoes.
When he first tasted success in 2006, Nutini was described as an old voice on young shoulders.
His raspy tone of voice saw him being compared to Rod Stewart and Joe Cocker. Now, 16 years later, he has gained more experience and his singing, especially on the ballads, is even more gravel.
Over 70 expansive minutes, Last Night In The Bittersweet, a double album in anything but name, darts between styles.
Lose It, featuring the electronic rhythm of 1970s German bands like Can and Neu! revived, his time seems to address from the spotlight: ‘I apparently could not find a way out of my anxious thoughts,’ he sings.
“Feeling I’m left behind has let me down.” There’s also some Cure-like indie pop on the catchy Petrified In Love, and a sweet, Johnny Cash-style country ballad in Abigail.
On Shine A Light, he revisits the arena-rock dynamics of U2’s The Unforgettable Fire. After so much time away, it’s like he’s trying to cram four different albums into one.
Such variety is admirable, but it also provides a straw-gun approach. It’s only at the end of the album, where he delivers a string of beautifully crafted ballads – some acoustic; others build to grand orchestrations – that Last Night In The Bittersweet flows with real coherence.
Regina Spektor’s eighth album, it shuts down a bit of her old peculiarity in favor of songs with warmth and heart
Regina Spector has never been easy to pin down. Born in Moscow but a New York resident for 33 years, the Russian-American singer became synonymous with her adopted hometown rock scene after supporting The Strokes.
She has since made her mark on Broadway and become a mainstay of TV and film soundtracks. Among her celebrity fans are Peter Gabriel, who covered her song Après Moi, and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda.
What is missing, at least in this country, is the mainstream pop success that deserves her songwriting flair and flowing piano playing. Home, Before And After may be the record for changing that.
Her eighth album, it shuts down a bit of her old peculiarity in favor of songs with warmth and heart.
Spector (42) was sometimes defined by her eccentricities: previous party pieces included the imitation of the sound of a trumpet and the perfection (on 2009’s Folding Chair) an impression of a singing dolphin.
There are some typically whimsical twists here. Loveology describes her as a schoolteacher who specializes in porcupine biology and antler ology.
Becoming All Alone finds her singing of a chance encounter with God, for whom she stumbles while walking home alone. The Almighty suggests that they go for a beer (‘We do not even have to pay, because God is God and he is reverent’).
She is also a sophisticated, highly original artist. Beneath its bizarre storyline, Becoming All Alone is a powerful song about loneliness.
Up The Mountain seeks answers in the natural world
Elsewhere, Spacetime Fairytale is a jazzy, nine-minute suite about the secrets of the universe, and Coin an inventive ballad about the contrasting outcomes of giving cash to a shaman, a president, a scientist and a baby ( the latter swallowed it whole ‘).
She justifies a wider trial.
Singer Ali Campbell’s incarnation of UB40 is one of two competing factions of the Birmingham Orchestra doing the rounds. Their latest offering, Unknown, is not just a sparkling sequel to 2018’s A Real Labor Of Love. It is also a fitting memorial to his former bandmate Astro, who died two weeks after the two finished this album in November last year.
It’s a sunny, upbeat affair fueled by the band’s original reggae spirit. Campbell has a knack for putting a soft, melodic reggae twist on unlikely tracks. Here he covers East 17’s Stay Another Day, Stevie Wonder’s protest number Do Yourself A Favor and, quite surprisingly, Kris Kristofferson’s hangover song Sunday Mornin ‘Comin’ Down.
Amidst a handful of originals – Ali and Astro fit perfectly on the title track, just as they did on UB40’s version of Red Red Wine – there are two nods to Britain’s reggae line in front pages of Gappy Ranks’ Heaven In Her Eyes and Louisa Mark’s lovers rock standard Caught You In A Lie, the latter delicately sung by Ali’s daughter Indica.