Album: Marc Caroll

Ten of Swords, Evangeline

The sleeve design – a parody of a 10-disc Dylan bootleg of the same title – serves due notice of the young Irish songwriter Marc Carroll's ambition, but is an unreliable guide to his style. For while the opening "Crashpad Number" deftly apes the harmonies and jangly Rickenbacker arpeggios of The Byrds, there are actually few songs on this compact 11-track album that could merit the description "Dylanesque". In fact, Carroll's ambitions have a much broader sweep, which places him closer to the likes of Brian Wilson and Todd Rundgren. Like them, he has the vision to perceive the larger musical picture, and like Rundgren, at least, the ability to realise that picture virtually without outside assistance, through laborious overdubbing of all the instruments on all but a few of these tracks, with his vocal harmonies likewise layered in grand cascades atop the arrangements. But while he can turn his hand to several different modes, from the Wilco-style country-rock of "You Saved My Life (Again Last Night)" to the English psychedelic throwback of "Mrs Lullaby" and the trancey, trip-hop feedback drones of "In Silence", sometimes one gets the impression that the elaborate embellishments are trying to conceal weaknesses in the base material. Some of this is simply down to his youth – several songs reflect his trepidation about having to grow up – though ironically, given his skill at musical mimicry, Carroll's main theme seems to be a determination to plough his own furrow, and leave his own mark on the world. With a little more worldliness, his next album should be something special.