Ireland being a tiny nation with a disproportionately large diaspora, and with the influx of outsiders from Europe and beyond, means what we consider to be “Irish” art is inevitably changing.

We’re quick enough to claim any non-natives who have settled, however briefly, in our cities and towns, changing not just the style of music coming out of Ireland, but also the accent and even the language its sung in. But what of those born here who find themselves writing and recording overseas? Outside of the US and the UK their voices rarely echo back this far.

So comes ‘Cenotaph Tapes’ by John Carroll. A Limerick-born man but based in Hangzhou, China, his album may have been recorded there, but it pursues a distinctly Americana songwriting-style. Add this to his prominent Irish accent and vocabulary and you’d seem to have an album with an identity crisis. Indeed, this first impression lands closer to the mark than you’d think.

With few exceptions, the music itself lands on a beautifully reflective tone. The lyrics and vocals however consistently fail to connect with this music. Second track If I’d Known gives an example of some of the album’s artless sentimentality, as we hear very bluntly put reasons for why it’s so tough living in China with lyrics such as “and the faces that I once called friends that barely contact me/while the new life that I’m building comes with firewalls and proxies”. Grammar crimes aside, Carroll seems to be making the mistake that simply listing thoughts to music constitutes “songwriting”, where in fact he has missed out on the key elements of simplicity and transformation.

However, on this song of emigration woes it helps to remember that when he sings “Faraway in China, the world’s a different place…” that he’s actually in China, and that his album features Chinese musicians. Why then are we hearing this lament for a mundane life in the West of Ireland when he is in a part of the world that would be endlessly fascinating to hear about? The singer on ‘Cenotaph Tapes’ isn’t an Irish musician in China, he’s an Irish musician away from home, and somehow that cultural sledgehammering keeps this album from achieving an international prestige that was within its grasp.

It’s not just the lyrical content that feels off here though. Carroll too often reverts to conventions in American folk music and so ends up faking emotion when he sings or sounding like an inferior imitation of other artists. On He’s The Road for example we see how the singing style he employs on the album doesn’t suit his tone. Towards the end of the song when the music stops he hums out the vocal melody but these elongated musical phrases simply don’t work and they appear all over the album.

One of the editorial skills an artist should have is to know when something they do sounds corny or hits a bum note. For a recording artist this includes knowing when the singing is emotionally inconsistent with the music or what’s being expressed in the lyrics. ‘Cenotaph Tapes’ feels like a first go through, as if the songs merely formed themselves and were considered done, as if none of the craft required to write great songs was employed, that instead whatever arrived out of the creative well-spring found its way onto the record completely unmodified. John Carroll can clearly write beautiful music, as is clear from the album highlight Where the Deer Leaps High, but here he has failed to find his own musical identity.