Paolo Nutini

It's instructive to see Paolo Nutini, the Italo-Scottish object of so much female desire, kicking off the first of two performances at the Royal Albert Hall. Wearing lived-in black jeans and a plaid shirt that's just a little too small for him, Nutini bends double over his microphone stand and growls, as though an impoverished sharecropper's upbringing had left him with scoliosis, and a lifetime of bad living had landed him with syphilitic renal failure. The crowd faintly thrums with the desire to mother him. By contrast, men are a little more circumspect. "I fucking hate Paolo Nutini," tweeted Labour parliamentary prospect Stuart MacLennan recently – a refreshing attitude, perhaps, but, on balance, a little harsh (and rash – MacLennan was sacked on Friday for over-zealous tweeting). The first song is "10/10", a lilting reggae confection that recalls Toots and the Maytals, and what it may sorely lack in cool, it makes up for in audacity and warmth. Nutini seems blissfully unaware that 23-year-olds from Paisley are not supposed to affect the manner and cadences of wizened reggae old-timers. It has also clearly not occurred to him that aping Otis Redding might be an undertaking open to ridicule. Then again, it probably didn't occur to the young Van Morrison either. Nutini has some considerable distance to go before he makes an Astral Weeks , but having begun his pop life as a wipe-clean matinee idol, he has neatly side-stepped those wearisome James Blunt and James Morrison comparisons of late. Nutini's second album, last year's Sunny Side Up , found the Paisley pin-up thumbing his nose at the slickness of his successful debut, These Streets , and immersing himself in old-time sounds – soul, reggae, folk, bluegrass, ragtime. His major-label handlers were less than keen, but Nutini was vindicated – amply so. Sunny Side Up has sold more than a million copies. Tonight his live band are abetted by a suited'n'booted brass section, the Horns of Thunder, as boisterous and eager as young squirrels. Intriguingly, the Steve Bentley-Kline string quartet gently pluck their accompaniment to "High Hopes", rather than strangling it in chords. Bongos and ukulele complete the picture of a band that is showy without always being irredeemably obvious. After an auspicious start, though, knee-jerk big-band high jinking takes over. The lead guitarist pulls "rock" faces, as though the act of playing guitar involved passing a kidney stone. There is a lot of larking about, swapping hats; various guitarists sing their backing vocals while leaning against each other, suggesting Nutini's band are fully aware of their need to entertain in the most time-honoured way. "I work for the NHS," notes my neighbour approvingly, "and that is just what I need after a day's work." With his soul revue brass and his vintage voice, it must be an eternal mystery to Nutini why Amy Winehouse is considered credible and he isn't. Both grew up in households where old soul was the default musical setting. Preternaturally weather-beaten pipes run through their skinny young frames. They are both partial to a bit of skanking. Tonight, Nutini's cover of John Holt's "Riding for a Fall", for instance, is rueful, woozy and pitch-perfect. The answer isn't as simple as the lack of a beehive, or a drug habit. You could gripe about the perceived authenticity gap in a Scottish kid making like a soul man, but the issue of authenticity is never as straightforward as it appears. The past 75 years of popular music have taught us repeatedly that you don't have to be a syphilitic sharecropper to sing the blues. The last time I saw Paolo Nutini live, he was fronting Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings, warming up for Led Zeppelin at the Ahmet Ertegün tribute concert. Ertegün had signed Nutini to Atlantic in a flurry of praise. But over the course of an hour and a half at the Albert Hall, Nutini channels vintage genres like an Amazon conveyor belt at Christmas. His songs are full of warmth but become plastic in bulk. Crucially, perhaps, Nutini's love for the old-timers does not dovetail logically into musical ambition, or originality. There are regular feints towards Bob Dylan, while Nutini's default soul fetish quickly accommodates percolating country romps and Scots-Irish folk forms. Curiously, he sings everything as though he had grown up in Jamaica rather than the central Lowlands. There is absolutely no excuse, either, for the comedy bluegrass of "Funky Cigarette", a live favourite about smoking a spliff that ends with Nutini attempting to inhale the microphone. "Pencil Full of Lead" is a Carry On rock'n'roll parody of sexual longing, featuring a tuba. You can't blame Nutini for the fact that our exit after a three-song encore is soundtracked by Bob Marley's "Exodus" – has any crowd ever looked less like Jah people? – but it is typical of his take on vintage sounds: full of references and signifiers, but lacking in lasting significance.