Lewis Capaldi
Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent (Virgin EMI)
Rating:
Verdict: Blustery break-up album
The National
I Am Easy To Find (4AD)
Rating: 
Verdict: Meandering masterpiece
We are in the age of the boy-next-door pop star, where personable males dominate the airwaves with big voices and blokeish charm.
With Ed Sheeran having paved the way for George Ezra and Tom Walker, the latest to make a virtue of being ordinary is Lewis Capaldi. The Glaswegian, 22, trades on his approachability.
A distant relative of Doctor Who actor Peter Capaldi (his dad’s second cousin), he still lives with his parents, paid his dues by covering Beatles standards in local pubs and uses Twitter to post cheery everyday updates.
Lewis Capaldi: Offering blokeish charm with a side-order of heartache. The mild man of rock rarely deviates from his forlorn, piano-backed blueprint, repeatedly wallowing in self-pity without adding nuance
‘In 2019, people just want to like the person they’re listening to,’ he says. It’s paying off handsomely.
This summer, he plays four huge outdoor shows with Sheeran. He’s also announced an arena tour for 2020.
And when his big piano ballad, Someone You Loved, spent seven weeks at number one, he reacted with a typical wisecrack: ‘I won’t let it change me . . . you can congratulate me through one of my assistants.’
With Ed Sheeran having paved the way for George Ezra and Tom Walker, the latest to make a virtue of being ordinary is Lewis Capaldi, above. The Glaswegian, 22, trades on his approachability
His self-effacing nature is evident in the title of his first album.
The ‘uninspired’ line is from a song he penned about writer’s block which failed to make the final cut, although any fans expecting a barrel of laughs from the tracks that did survive should approach with caution: this is a heartache special every bit as woebegone as Adele’s 21.
Lewis has a strong, blue-eyed soul voice and a tendency to emote.
He soars to a falsetto on the catchy Someone You Loved and adopts a raspier tone on Bruises, reprised here after originally being issued independently in 2017. No track passes without a big, blustery crescendo.
The mild man of rock rarely deviates from his forlorn, piano-backed blueprint, repeatedly wallowing in self-pity without adding nuance.
On Grace, he wonders whether he is ‘too wounded to ever come down’. Lost On You finds him ‘a slave to the heartache’.
It’s no wonder he’s ‘running near on empty’ by the time we get to the penultimate track
