It's taken a year for Mark Charles Heidinger's album to find a UK release, the Kentuckian spending the intervening time touring Europe. Here he mixes French chanson with folk and sounds like an updated Leonard Cohen. ****

Channeling countless '60s folksingers in his emphatic strums and sharp rhymes, Heidinger released Grace & Speed under the name Vandaveer early this year. That album's opening track, "However Many Takes It Takes," feels comfortingly familiar... With a voice suitable for both rock and folk, he has a natural flair for the delivery of the latter...

The Vandaveer name carries with it far more of Dylan’s spirit than other contributors to the genre... he’s telling stories, some of which betray a cautious optimism, but most of which find dark places to hide, with very little in the way of happy endings... This is a singer who can tell a pitch-black story in a way that makes it sound more like unfortunate happenstance than world-moving tragedy, as an observer rather than an interpreter.

You may not yet know the name Mark Charles Heidinger, but you should. When he’s not tearing it up with The Apparitions, he’s creating well-crafted modern folk music under the moniker Vandaveer. Grace & Speed is superb from start to finish, showing Heidinger’s gift for storytelling and sense of economy.

Mark Charles Heidinger keeps one lo-fi tic, recording his essentially solo music under a band alias, Vandaveer. But this troubadour, known as the frontman of D.C.'s pop-rock Apparitions, doesn't cloak his songs in any sort of indie shtick. "However Many Takes It Takes" opens Vandaveer's debut, "Grace & Speed," with a directness and immediacy that evokes pre-electric Bob Dylan.

A surprisingly accomplished set of folk-ribbed and rock-informed tunes...

Despite its name, Grace & Speed is actually a very dark and beautifully grim composition... [The] tracks have a Tom-Waits-by-streetlight feel to them, with just a hint of Andrew Bird in the vocals.

Blending dark pop, troubadour rock, and catchy folk, Heidinger carves himself a niche not frequently traveled but to which listeners find themselves addicted.

One only needs to look to the masterful construction of "However Many Takes It Takes" to see that Heidinger feels the genre in his bones, as his learned tone confidently suggests that Vandaveer is worth a listen, that his stories are worth being heard.