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If you had never heard (of) him before, you would swear Jack Savoretti<\/a> had timed his arrival on the British music scene to perfection. His gruffly soulful voice and introspective singer-songwriting chime with the music of Josh Kumra, and although he doesn\u2019t have the faint glimmer of association with the world of grime enjoyed by Ed Sheeran<\/a> you can see this album appealing to a similar audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n The difference is that Savoretti is older than Sheeran by eight years and this is his third album. His first two \u2013 2007\u2019s Between the Minds<\/a> and 2009\u2019s Harder Than Easy \u2013 didn\u2019t reach the commercial heights expected of someone with his husky tones and, let\u2019s be honest, hunky frame, apparently losing out in the sexy-but-sensitive-troubadour stakes to James Morrison<\/a> and Paolo Nutini<\/a>.<\/p>\n For his third album, Savoretti is taking no chances. Produced by Martin Terefe (Morrison, Jason Mraz<\/a>) and featuring a songwriting team-up with Steve Booker (co-writer of Duffy<\/a>‘s Mercy), Before the Storm is a trove of gently strummed acoustica for fans of manly introspection and romantic navel-gazing. Not Worthy is the freewheeling opener, complete with handclaps, the kind of\u00a0thing that would have made sense cruising down a US freeway in 1977. The Proposal takes this retro-country-rockin’ to its logical conclusion, effectively revisiting the melody and brisk gait of Take it Easy by the Eagles<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Throughout the album, Savoretti\u2019s voice is unreconstructed in its manly tenderness \u2013 you can almost taste the testosterone, even when he’s being all anguished and alone. The titles and lyrics tell their own story: this is someone steeped in the language \u2013 and clich\u00e9s \u2013 of the guitar-toting outsider. On Take Me Home he\u2019s walking \u201cdown this lonely street\u201d; elsewhere, he beseeches someone to Come Shine a Light.<\/p>\n Before the Storm is so pre-postmodern it\u2019s not true \u2013 the only track that nods to music of the last 20 years is Changes, whose chord change is reminiscent of The Verve<\/a>\u2019s The Drugs Don\u2019t Work. A more interesting inclusion would have been his duet with Sienna Miller, Hate & Love, as used in The Vampire Diaries. The track\u2019s unexplained absence is a shame because it is, production-wise, a leap into new echoey, reverb-drenched territory. But it\u2019s unlikely it would have sat easily beside many of these numbers, these ragged and raw confessionals that could have been released at any time in the last four decades.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n