Tom McRae - 'King Of Cards' (V2) Released 14/05/07

Who the hell is Tom McRae? No, this isn’t a rhetorical question (although anyone not so au fait with Mercury Prize winners circa 2001 may be asking this very question), but who is he – surely by now, after seven-odd years, the Essex born singer-songwriter must have given us some clues? On the basis of ‘King of Cards’, McRae’s fourth album, we’re no nearer to learning the answer. It’s not that his work is enigmatic – it hasn’t been that since he decamped to America to record his third album, ‘All Maps Welcome’ - it’s just that this often-entrancing songwriter is so prone to fits of artistic pique that we may never know the true heart that beats behind his work.

His eponymously-titled debut, and to a lesser extent its follow up, 2003’s ‘Just Like Blood’ were critically acclaimed for their uncompromising and heart-wrenching beauty. McRae spun finely-weaved vignettes about the darker side of love and loss, proving himself in the process as one of the best lyricists of his ilk. Comparisons with Jeff Buckley weren’t hyperbolic; there were times, especially on tracks like ‘A+B Song’ and ‘You Cut Her Hair’ on his first record that he almost transcended the ‘Grace’ star. But it went sour very quickly. Commercial apathy, coupled with the rise of far-inferior artists like Dido and James Blunt seemed to force a career meltdown, his third album was an overly sentimental stab at the American middle market, with only flashes of the genius he possessed showing through.

He was, in effect, selling his soul without a price. He raged consistently in live shows and on his blog about the unfairness of it all, but never quite translating this into an album worthy of his talents. In ‘King of Cards’ he may have it, but it is still short on the meaning and heart we had hoped for. Another marketing disaster, you will be lucky to have heard this had been released – it’s a disservice, because, as frustrating as Mcrae can be, this is still better than most of his peers on both sides of the Atlantic.