Eight albums into his career, Adam Carroll still paints vignettes in the simplest terms while making them sound like he’s filming in Technicolor. There have been some changes in his manner. Let It Choose You finds the Austinite sounding as confident as he’s ever been, and producer Lloyd Maines provides new licks for the songwriter to hang his poetry on. Gulf Coast imagery has long provided Carroll with fodder for his stories, and two squeeze box-laced tunes, “Rough Side” and “Li’l Runaway,” bring out his Cajun side, coming across as almost Mellencamp-ish in their portrayal of day in, day out Americana. Recent nuptials provides a couple of love songs, “Wrote It for You,” and “Household Name,” both touching and remarkable for the indirect way Carroll approaches the subject. Long compared to the likes of John Prine and Townes Van Zandt, Adam Carroll proves he’s beyond compare.
This article appears in August 15 • 2014.