Luke Elliot is moody crooner from New Jersey with a carefully cultivated poetic sensibility.
The songs in his second studio album are introspective to the point of narcissism so that the whole world appears to resolve around whatever shadows are cast on his tortured brow.
There is no real sense of drama even when describing the events of an 1839 storm which is the subject of the title track: "the roof has blown off the shed - but there's always eternity", he nonchalantly observes.
The album was recorded in Oslo which explains the guest vocal spot from popular Norwegian singer Sivert Høyem on Somebody's Man.
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The piano-driven songs are frequently augmented by fussy orchestral arrangements that add to their overblown ethos.
A Celtic lilt fails to inject much life into Paradise mainly due to banalities like "people are born and die every day".
A few hints of vulnerability would go a long way to lifting these autobiographical musings above the level of self-indulgent navel-gazing.
Luke Elliot's website
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