I got a bit of a shock on opening the press release for this album as it was the first one I've been sent that's written in Mandarin!! Thankfully it's also in English. But JOHN CARROLL is that strangest of artists: an Irish Musician now based in Hangzhou, China who has toured and performed widely in South Korea and China but is pretty much unknown either in Ireland or the UK. His previous album was given away on the steps of Waverley Station in Edinburgh apparently.
Well, musically this is very polite sounding acoustic folk songs with nice lyrics sung sonorously slowly wrapping themselves round you like a warm hug. Very little of the music or the lyrics conjure up any Chinese imagery; even having a Chinese Opera singer on the fade out of The Farmer & The Fresian really doesn't give it much of an Asian flavour.
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The album seems to want to fade into the background as you sit chilling out, maybe sipping some Lung Ching tea rather than careening down the Bund in Shanghai for some fun. Instead we are cowering, making sure that we Don't Shield Our Eyes and see what's really happening in this brutal world, but as he sings of such stuff the music is so nice and polite you almost miss the content of the lyrics.
This is a very polite, perfectly nice folk album that may well slip from my mind the moment it stops playing which is a shame as it's worth hearing in its own well-crafted way.
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