Dan Croll – Sweet Disarray

After the ubiquitousness of ‘Compliment Your Soul’ last year, you’d be forgiven for assuming Liverpool-based singer-songwriter Dan Croll would offer up an album’s worth of soaring indie-pop; a sort of Bastille-lite-with-guitars, if you will. It probably doesn’t help that his name’s Dan, and he’s got big hair and glasses too. Debut long-player, ‘Sweet Disarray’, is quite the opposite: Croll and gang subtly veer from the Paul Simon-indebted afro-pop (‘Always Like This’) to the R&B-tinged (‘Can You Hear Me’) via the stunning M.Ward-esque warmth of the title track and closer ‘Home’.

It’s gorgeously (self-)produced, too. ‘Only Ghost’, with its acoustic-led melodies could quite easily be ‘A N Other bedroom folk singer’, but the subtle synths save it from boredom. The terribly-titled ‘Thinkin Aboutchu’ channels Darwin Deez in its eclecticism, but reigned in. It’s far less confusing than the curly-haired American’s output. The Metronomy-styled synths of opener ‘From Nowhere’ and arrhythmic ‘Maway’ show off a post-xx, post-Alt-J use of all kinds of strange sounds done quietly – it’s arguable that while Croll’s songwriting is accomplished, ‘Sweet Disarray’ would be half the record it is without the perfectly-pitched instrumentation.

And, despite this variety, not once does the record feel disjointed, or out of place. It’s a skill, but Croll’s soothing vocals, as well as he and his team’s spot-on engineering of the whole lot means it can slide from that soaring single to Croll’s inner Justin Timberlake via steel guitars and ukelele without missing a beat. It’s pleasantly pristine stuff from the still relative newcomer.