ADRIAN THRILLS: Jack Savoretti brings a warm glow with a feel-good album of Euro pop 

JACK SAVORETTI: Europiana (EMI)   

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Verdict: A soundtrack for summer

JONI MITCHELL: Blue 50 (Demo & Outtakes) (Rhino)

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Verdict: Landmark birthday celebration   

Like a lot of singer-songwriters, Jack Savoretti began his career by gazing longingly across the Atlantic. 

His early records were a blend of country, folk and blues that ticked all the boxes of earthy Americana. He covered Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire and duetted with Kylie on her Nashville country album, Golden.

That changed with his 2019 breakthrough Singing To Strangers. Born in London to an Italian father and German-Polish mother and educated in Switzerland, Savoretti effortlessly switched his allegiance to the European pop he’d been raised on — and was rewarded with his first No 1 album and a headline gig at Wembley Arena.

Singing To Strangers, made in the late film composer Ennio Morricone’s studio in Rome, looked to retro-flavoured 1960s pop and the romantic chanson of Charles Aznavour. It finally gave Savoretti, 37, a distinctive calling card, and it’s one he plays again, this time with added disco adornments, on his seventh album, Europiana.

The album, its title a play on Americana, was written in his Oxfordshire home and recorded with his touring band between lockdowns.

It’s a summer record, its feel-good tunes coated with the warm glow of Riviera bars and beaches. ‘Europiana isn’t a sound,’ he says. ‘It’s the music of my childhood summers.’

For all its Euro-pop inclinations, it’s also an album boosted by two high-profile American guests. On his previous album, Savoretti put his own music to a set of unused Bob Dylan lyrics (with Bob’s blessing). Here, he’s joined by Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers, who adds his hallmark verve to Who’s Hurting Who, and John Oates, of Hall & Oates, who appears on the laid-back When You’re Lonely.

Other guests hail from closer to home. Unable to hire any backing vocalists due to the pandemic, the singer is joined by his actress wife Jemma Powell and the couple’s nine-year-old daughter, Connie, on electronic soul number I Remember Us. Jack and Jemma trade spoken-word lines again on the Euro-pop romp Secret Life, their real-life closeness giving the song an authentic ring.

There’s more disco escapism on the loved-up Too Much History — ‘I love it when it feels like this, dancing like it’s ’76’ — and quarantine anthem Dancing In The Living Room, but it’s the album’s more heartfelt songs about family and friendship that give Europiana its emotional core.

Savoretti’s raspy voice has matured into a smoother croon, and he now handles melancholy power ballads such as The Way You Said Goodbye and War Of Words, both written with his pianist, Shannon Harris, with aplomb, keeping his fondness for melodrama in check when- ever the songs threaten to become overwrought.

In keeping with the nostalgic mood, he uses another piano ballad, More Than Ever, to sing about the good old days that inspired him. ‘Looking back at all my memories with so much joy, summers spent in Italy when I was a boy.’ For those of us who won’t be holidaying this year, this album might be the next best thing.

Joni Mitchell’s 1971 masterpiece Blue turned 50 this week, and the landmark anniversary is being marked by two separate releases. 

The original LP, along with the Canadian’s three preceding albums (Song To A Seagull, Clouds and Ladies Of The Canyon), has been re-mastered as part of The Reprise Albums, a four-disc box set out on CD (£33), vinyl (£97), and digitally.

Five unreleased demos from the original sessions are also out digitally, as Blue 50, ahead of a larger reissue in the autumn.

Widely regarded as one of the best albums of all time, and certainly a high-water mark of the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter scene, Blue was created in the aftermath of Joni’s romantic split from British singer Graham Nash, but it was more of a coming-of-age record than a disconsolate break-up one.

Written on an Appalachian dulcimer as Joni mooched around Europe, it was a confessional affair that hovered between pop and folk, and it’s no wonder that songs such as Carey — about her relationship with an American chef she met on a Greek island — still strike such a chord with younger singers such as Lana Del Rey and St. Vincent.

Fellow Laurel Canyon dweller David Crosby admits to being so ‘crushed’ by Joni’s brilliance on Blue that he considered quitting music to become a gardener.

The outtakes shed fresh light on a classic. An early demo version of A Case Of You is looser and more intimate than the one on the 1971 album. An alternate take on River, about her relationship with Nash, is augmented by French horn. And Mitchell’s flighty voice is high and light on a demo version of California, a song about homesickness.

The new EP also features two tracks that didn’t make Blue’s final cut. Hunter, about a stray cat, is unusually throwaway for Joni. But the folky Urge For Going, later a B-side, would have chimed perfectly with Blue’s underlying theme of wanderlust, and it’s given some deserved prominence here.

Both records are out now. Jack Savoretti plays festivals this summer and starts a UK tour at Plymouth Pavilions on March 24, 2022 (gigsandtours.com). 

Classical

HANDEL: 6 Concerti Grossi, Op. 3 (BIS BIS2079)

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Expert Tasmanian period-instrument musicians Van Diemen’s Band make their disc debut. 

They play Handel’s earlier set of Concerti Grossi with true Australian breeziness but due attention to subtleties and rhythmic verve. 

The recording quality is absolutely super. This SACD will do you proud. 

PROKOFIEV: Cello Concerto etc. (First Hand Records FHR118)

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The great cellist Rohan de Saram taped three live Prokofiev performances for Dutch radio in 1971 and ’72. 

With his pianist brother Druvi de Saram, he also performs Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata and his early Ballade; the understanding between the brothers is uncanny.