Album Review

Jack Savoretti – Gypsy Love/ One Man Band

• 12th Apr 2008

Another of the guys-with-guitars brigade, Jack Savoretti has an Anglo-Italian background to match Paolo Nutini and peripatetic childhood to rival James Blunt, but challenges neither on songwriting aptitude or emotional appeal.

An off –the-peg raspy voice oozes sincerity and suffering but could have haunted the airwaves in any of the past three decades with stories of lovers and hookers, outlaws and fools.

Though it may bring to mind a bunk up in a caravan, Gypsy Love is in fact a saga of two free spirits that’s pure cornball with added slide guitar and Hammond vibrato. Kind of Ray LaMontagne meets the broken-hearted, cheese-with-everything Americana of The Eagles. Ditto the flipside One Man Band, a tale of giving up cocaine and heading out to California for margaritas by the pool, recounted in the style of a Butlins Bob Dylan. Frank, possibly, but a little phony, with the “Latin good looks” attributed by his biog and facial hair suggesting a Russell Brand of Adult Contemporary (Russell Bland anyone?). No USP but very MOR.