Let it never be said that Chris Carrabba is lazy. With Twin Forks, the doe-eyed emo heartthrob brings his current project count up to four – alongside a CV-bursting list of collaborations and guest appearances – though this time taking a decidedly more folk-based route.
Strangely though, Twin Forks doesn’t feel hugely different to Carrabba’s ‘day job’ in Dashboard Confessional. While all the tropes of a folk-pop project are there – from handclaps and whistles, to the predictable wheeling out of a banjo – the album is definitely still reliant on Carrabba, as both singer and songwriter. The quiet-LOUD-quiet dynamic of entry-level folk such as Mumford & Sons also rears its head far too often, leading to many of the tracks feeling much the same as the album continues.
The one factor that does help distinguish the tracks is Carrabba’s time-honoured ability to squeeze a catchy chorus out of heartache and anxiety – a talent that is not lost on this project. The result is a handful of tracks that are effortlessly catchy, if not the most innovative of works. Unfortunately this falls apart towards the latter half of the album, which gets progressively slower and more plodding, as if the chorus machine ran dry at the mid-point.
By and large, ‘Twin Forks’ is incredibly reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen’s brief dabble in folk with ‘The Seeger Sessions’ – particularly on ‘Scraping Up The Pieces’, in which the vocal could be lifted from a recording session with The Boss himself. And ultimately that is the main problem with Twin Forks, both as a band and a record. It never tries hard enough to break free of the Chris Carrabba tag, and so ultimately never develops its own identity. A solid effort, but unfortunately not enough to flourish outside of the shadow of a man whose impact on the scene is already well documented.