There was a stretch where Paolo Nutini didn’t so much disappear as wander a little too far into the woods. Not metaphorically — practically. “I went about too far into that,” he laughed. “That was a problem.” The break wasn’t about chasing inspiration or playing the recluse-genius card. It was about learning how to be a person who could function if the songs ever stopped mattering. Or if the apocalypse showed up early.
“I needed to learn how to work with my hands,” he said. “I could do songs — I had my skills — but none of them would help me.” He started thinking ahead, absurdly and sincerely at once. “If one day I was lucky enough to have a family… what can I teach the kid?” These days, he’s a better cook. He can fix things around the house. He’s not quite building tables yet, but he’s “getting there.” At the very least, the old musician jokes don’t apply. “It helps,” he shrugged. Self-sufficiency, as it turns out, is a confidence booster.
That reset bled directly into Caustic Love, though not in any neat, therapeutic arc. “There was no agenda,” Nutini said. “There was no clocking on, clocking off.” For a long time, it wasn’t even clear there would be an album at all. Fifty songs piled up without instructions. Then something shifted. “All of a sudden this atmosphere came along,” he said. “I thought, this sounds like an album rather than just a bunch of songs.”
Only then did he decide to let people in.
There was no panic about being gone too long, no fear of missing a trend cycle. Nutini’s never belonged to one anyway. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a look,” he said. “I’ve never really been part of a specific style.” If people came back, it would be for the music — or not at all. “You’ve got to do what you have to do,” he said. “Or else you burn out.”
Ironically, the soul-heavy sound everyone latched onto wasn’t even his idea. He had to be talked into it. Those songs lived in a private headspace, something he retreated into rather than showcased. But when he played them for collaborators, the reaction was immediate. Fellow musicians lit up. “It seemed like a good idea,” he said, still sounding mildly surprised it worked.
In the end, Caustic Love didn’t arrive as a comeback. It arrived because it insisted on existing — fully formed, self-contained, and stubbornly itself. Much like the guy who made it.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
