Carus Thompson could be considered the biggest work horse of the Australian music scene. After years of relentless touring throughout Europe, Carus has returned home to release his latest offering
Caravan. While the album was written and recorded across 3 differing countries, Carus states that the album is not to be heard or seen as a ‘road album’, yet as a metaphor of how he has become who he is and how he reached this point.
Having toured with the likes of Jack Johnson, The Dave Matthews Band and Damien Rice, Carus’s name has become quite large in Europe, and
Caravan shows why. Opening track, ‘Red Sky’ is a perfect example of his grandeur, with a mellow but attainable folksy feel supported with conveying but, hollow, violin chords. Straight after ‘Red Sky’, you are thrown into the contrasting sound that Carus creates with the token Paul Kelly sounding track in, ‘You Can’t Find Me’ with a very straight up rock approach that will keep the feet tapping. Many highlights reach out across the album, with the extremely catchy ‘Inland Sea’ in a buoyant, nautical and jaunty ambience – Why not use a fiddle for its proper use – and ‘Headstrong’ in yet another complete adverse impression of the album, with a country twangy feel in the chorus.
While
Caravan is jammed packed with acutely manifested folk, the flow of it just doesn’t seem quite right, with many changes of pace that don’t come across subtle as they should, changing the whole mannerism of the mood in one foul swoop. Albeit, the positives considerably outweigh the negatives, it is hard to sit through the whole of ‘Caravan’ without getting confused to what kind of album it is trying to be.
Carus Thompson does his best work when sitting on a stool at your local, at around 10 PM on a Friday night. And that is where his music is most appreciated and seen as the most thought provoking.
Caravan is not meant to be criticised as an album on a whole, but how the songs come across in the live setting, and whence the songs are transformed across from the stage into your heart. And to how Carus accomplishes this, there can be no fault found.
