Jack McManus is heading up the stairs of an old-time theatre in South London. That was once owned by Charlie Chaplin. It's all flaking paint and musty carpets, and when Jack lets slip that the place is reputedly haunted by one of Chaplin's leading ladies, it's all too believable.

A windowless former office at the top was where Jack's debut album, Either Side Of Midnight, first began to take shape. If the resident ghost has any appreciation of music she'll have been twitching with ectoplasmic delight. The reason is clear as soon as you press Play: Jack McManus writes songs like an old soul. That's to say, they have the richness and, well, bigness, you'd expect of someone who's been alive for much longer than 23 years. If you wanted to go out on a limb, you could call them future classics. But since Jack was only born in 1984, there's an exuberant edge that stops them from being too damned perfect.

Pop is clearly in the McManus DNA; his dad supplied pyrotechnics for big rock acts, and accompanied several on the road. McManus senior worked on, among others, Pink Floyd's "The Wall" tour. Jack went along to gigs, and when Dad found an abandoned drum kit in the pyro factory, his seven-year-old son became obsessed with it. The drums were followed by piano, then trumpet. By the time he arrived at the Brit School he was virtually a one-man band.

Jack's Brit years exposed him to a world of new influences including R&B, soul and funk which hadn't been big in the McManus household and that mix is what set him on his current trajectory. That and an unshakeable, un-snobbish appreciation of the power of a big pop song: "I was brought up on classic pop and growing up in Bromley I got to see - and feel - the reaction a big song could have at the end of the night in the local clubs. That's what I'm after."

Through a friend, he found the writing-space in Charlie Chaplin's theatre. He brought his trumpet along, using it to compose melody lines, and found himself drawn toward a "Seventies vibe" inspired by the classic songwriters of that decade: Elton John, Billy Joel, Tom Petty who'd been popular at home. (Jack's mad hair, which he used to hate, also functions as a kind of tribute to that era.)

Originally the plan was to write songs for other people, because singing them himself was outside Jack's comfort zone. "It was only when I went to publishers with my demos, and they assumed I was going to be performing them, that I thought of myself as a singer. Now I wouldn't want to do anything else."

Jack co-wrote 'From The Rooftops' with Groove Armada for their Soundboy Rock album, and a spaced-out version of his vocal propels the finished track on its Erik Satie-ish path. The warmth of his voice comes across best, though, with a simpler treatment. Either live (he has spent the last few months touring with various artists including Scouting For Girls) or - naturally enough - on "Either Side Of Midnight". It's an instantly-accessible album, full of potential hits, as evidenced by the joyous first single "Bang On The Piano". Other highlights include the unashamedly beautiful "Fine Time To Lose Your Mind", with its echoes of The Eagles and Wichita Lineman, the glorious singalong "You Think I Don't Care" and the title track, which recalls the swoonsome pop of the Alessi Brothers.

It really is as simple as that: Either Side Of Midnight is an album of gorgeous, memorable tunes sung by the only person who could sing them. Think the archetypal singer-songwriter is a doomy misfit? Meet the exception to the rule.



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