Blue Merle's singer, Luke Reynolds, sounds exactly, uncannily, absurdly like Chris Martin of Coldplay. So much so that the experience of listening to the Nashville band's Island debut,
Burning in the Sun, starts with bewilderment, moves to annoyance, then progresses to laughter. A look at the album cover reveals that Reynolds not only employs Martin's same warbling falsetto and cotton-mouthed vocal bends but also has the same haircut. Is Blue Merle's music, flavored with winsome mandolin and violin breaks, worth diving into, regardless of the presence of a -- and let's make this perfectly clear -- Martin clone? Well, the music
is good -- the songwriting is sunny and sophisticated, with a touch of sleek rusticity. (After all, this band is from Nashville.) One element of the sound may be boundlessly derivative, but the rest of it deserves an unbiased listen.
