Londoner Marcus Foster is an able and marketable musician, ready to ride on the shoulders of his nu-folk contemporaries finding popular appeal with a fusion of singer-songwriter self-absorption and rasping-but-rousing choruses. This first full-length release suits him well (better than the debut EP from earlier this year), affording the opportunity to try on a few skins. The eclecticism of his influences and the breadth of his ambitions are praiseworthy – but Foster’s problems relate to a saturated scene and dearth of non-derivative ideas.

Nameless Path is a competent set of songs with an interestingly representative title track. It’s heartfelt, unwavering and perfectly proficient – but the tune is ultimately inconsequential and the increasingly intense vocals fail to engender empathy as song and album lug to a cryptic and anticlimactic conclusion. “A nameless path is where I tread / Guides me till tomorrow”, he intones, with lingering sentiment. “It’s taken all my memories / And then I’ll need yours to borrow”.

Album opener ‘Old Birch Tree’, by contrast, is a steady but rather emphatic rickety racket, catchy if a little bland. Second song ‘Shadows of the City’, a survivor from the Tumble Down EP, is rougher-hewn, sinister and as raw as is sanctioned on Nameless Path. The following ‘Faint Stir of Madness’ is also dramatic in its way, with an admirably full-pelt denouement. The trouble is, with a title like a stage direction and the obvious Tom Waits pretensions, it is engulfed in its own contrivance. Foster has the makings of a wholly articulate troubadour – this is not, after all, a bad album – but he must strive to find his own niche and wear his influences a little less readily. He’s not about to out-wrench Waits, any more than he can hope to out-Marcus Mumford.

No-one can affect oddity or charisma just by channelling established performers – and neither do I think Marcus Foster needs to. The hidden track that follows ‘Memory of Your Arms’ generates tangible atmosphere, sparse and piercing: a sort of jarring, funereal emotion. “The harbour is where I will wait”, he pledges. “The moon is a low broken plate.” There is something authentically haunting in his repeated laments of “when they reach the shore”, in piped high pitch, over baleful guitar. It’s probably the best thing on the album. Foster’s strained vocals are mercurial and captivating, accommodating a diverse stylistic range, if occassionally less gin-soaked than under-oiled. He can crank it up well though, skipping gears from rasp to shriek without so much as a gargle in between. This impressive versatility is demonstrated thoroughly, as befits a debut album, though the results are erratic nevertheless. I hope Foster can obtain a more concerted focus per album in future, be it brooding balladry, wrenched instability, howling holler, folksy stoicism, Nutini crooning or whatever. He demonstrates each with some aplomb and might become adroit in a chosen direction.

For now, however, Nameless Path is uneven. Decently presented as a full package, the (prominent) production achieves an attractive veneer, underneath which is a hubbub of a hodgepodge. ‘Movement’ morphs into an overwrought ‘Hey Jude’ pastiche and the sense of muddle is exemplified by the mysteriously misplaced circus jazz tacked onto the end of ‘The Room’. This switch from brassy bluster to clownish bugle-boogie is a step too far – and, worse, breaks the spell, signalling a run of less affecting songs that offer interest only to the engrossed. Adhering to this divide, lead single ‘I Was Broken’ is either a poignantly anguished epic or indugently inflated and fraught with the borrowed dolor of Mumford & dynasty. This isn’t Foster’s fault: nu-folk, to repeat that excruciating but accepted moniker (what would Ewan MacColl say?) tends to forget that just singing about yourself is not really the idea. Of course, singer/songwriters can do what they like, whoever their supposed forebears – but they’d do well to recognise the fine line between excoriating personal catharsis and lame navel-gazing.

Part of Foster’s problem is that he slots so well into the current crop, probably about half way up (or half way down). This is an ambitious but derivative record, packed with airplay potential, rousing resolve and an irrepressible urge to yearn – but the parboiled, hotchpotch concoction inspires conflicting reactions. If you commit to the hazy insistence or laboured urgency, you must contend with bloated wallowing, while subscribers to his stirring, earnest wail will surely be unsettled by the contrived menace that lies in wait elsewhere. There’s nothing really biting here, despite much gnashing of teeth (and his Twilight pedigree), while the softer cuts threaten to be interesting as well as intimate but never quite make it. With his obvious talent, it will be a shame if Marcus Foster does not go on to make sharper, more coherent albums – but as first footing, Nameless Path just about earns the benefit of the doubt.