There are a few problems to surmount for any outfit that seeks to ape such deified crazies as Beefheart, Pere Ubu, Tom Waits or Zappa and bring it to the boil with touches of funk, folky lulls, psychedelic detours and the delights of modern electric aggression in a jazz homage to krautrock.

Firstly, it is probably fair to say that you’re setting the bar pretty high. Secondly, it is probably fair to say that however nice your album packaging is, a massive, arty, black-and-white studio shot of the band in front of massive Bitches Brew and Don Van Vliet posters bodes ill for breaking free of the aforementioned influences. Thirdly, most fans of those influences are massive snobs (cf. this reviewer and his editor), which may hinder acceptance.

Against all that, Black Carrot are pretty good fun. They’ve got enough going on to avoid pure reductive plagiarism, even if they won’t kickstart a movement of their own. A shame all those pesky influences got there first, really...

Richard Davie