PAOLO NUTINI / LIANNE LA HAVAS | LIVE REVIEW
Singleton Park, Swansea, Sat 20 June
I was expecting an open-minded crowd on my first visit to Singleton Park, due to the case of a Swansea couple accused of public indecency at a Hyde Park concert where the alleged BJ-giving woman said “the rules must be different in England”. On arrival, there were scores of seagulls in a divebombing orgy on the litter bins, picking at the discards of the faux-gourmet burgers and chips, but other than that, I did see people of all shapes and sizes being entertained. This was, though, largely through Paolo Nutini and/or alcohol, rather than anything more lewd.
Main support act Lianne La Havas was excellent but underappreciated. Clad in a white trouser suit, blood-red lips and coiffed hair, she combines Hollywood glamour with a ton of talent. La Havas and band zip through a 45-minute set starting with two from her new album: Unstoppable and the jazzy Green & Gold, earmarking her as one of the best successors to a healthy Amy Winehouse.
The snaking rhythm of Is Your Love Big Enough finishes in a funky flurry of handclaps and Latino piano, and on Never Get Enough she unearths some seismic guitar riffs and distorted vocals. Only bettered, in the bilious stakes, by closer Forget, where she ironically introduces herself for about the fourth time – possibly to make up for her lack of billing and the strangely subdued response to her set, despite her Welsh language ingratiations.
When Nutini kicks off with Funked My Life Up and the lyric “scream Hallelujah”, the devotional crowd is immediately in rapture, bopping and clapping. It’s clear how his audience spans such diversity with the Otis-style good time soul of Coming Up Easy and tortured soul of No Other Way delighting and uniting the mods and the hen parties. His Scottish brogue is forefront on early song These Streets, evoking the pull and suffocation of hometown life that many Welsh folk can identify with, while the more brooding Diana and Iron Sky are intriguing enough for the hipsters.
His limp encore of MGMT’s Time To Pretend, meanwhile, highlighted the limit of his pretensions. After the tease of Lianne La Havas, Paolo Nutini wasn’t quite orgasmic for me, but he sure knows his way around an organ.
words CHRIS SEAL photos MIKE LEWIS (supplied by ORCHARD)