Somewhere Else – Rummage (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Mark Mulholland last cropped up within the scribblings of this dubious website in regards to his 2012 duet with dEUS ex-pat Craig Ward, the dreamy, baroque collection of drifting folk songs, Waiting For The Storm. Here we find him not only joined by long-term friends and collaborators Rusty Miller and James Finch Jr. from Jackpot but in an altogether jauntier mood.

In keeping with the ever shifting, always evolving nature of Marks work this album is hard to pigeon-hole, always a good start, as somehow he manages to hop genres at will – raw rock, melodic pop, late night cabaret club ballads, chilled blues and country grooves – but still come out with a cohesive collection of songs which somehow not only feel at home on the same album but also uniquely and intrinsically his own.

Scatter-gun approaches to music don’t always work, often they can suggest a lack of focus or identity within the musicians, here though they act to wonderfully showcase the eclectic nature and exploratory musical thought processes of Marks mind. It also begs the question as to what the hell his next album will have to offer.