Manchild & Myth
by Peter Koppes
REVIEWS and COMMENTS
In which yet another Churchman comes to grapple with his Questing Beast: the solo album. Onstage visual foil to twin affectations (an increasingly parodic Axe hero, a cloistered pseudo-Baudelaire), Koppes has generally given the impression of one content simply to play, proving himself in the process that band's most able instrumentalist.
If nothing else, this effort only affirms his technical ability: Manchild And Myth positively overflows with (surprise!) chiming guitars, all ashimmer — effectively rendering any attempt to consider this without recourse to Church comparisons (as Koppes would presumably wish us to) all but impossible. These Three Things, in particular, opens with a figure that could be equally at home on The Blurred Crusade, before closing with a solo that recalls his shining moment in Almost With You.
Yet a fact too often overlooked by many of its champions — latter-day Rain Parade springing immediately to mind — is that Jangle for it's own sake is simply not enough, and soon leaves all but the most zealous McGuinn devotee hungry for something more substantial. Here, that sound dominates with remorseless consistency, a uniform texture broken only by two brief instrumentals, Opus and Sahara — which are themselves all but surrounded by flashing neon signs reading 'VARIATION!' The melodies, a principal strength of so many Church pieces, are negligible — and helped not at all by a voice of severely limited range and emotive power.
The total effect, therefore, is not so much dreamy and reflective, as merely dull. Songs blur, becoming almost indistinguishable. Nothing is so damning as their sheer predictability: 30 seconds and you've heard it all — the rest is simply padding. One cannot help but feel the majority would benefit immeasureably from the simple addition of a middle eight — a tempo change, a smattering of distortion, a crumhorn solo...
Koppes' aesthetic principle is stated at the very outset: 'To seek love and beauty', he intones, earnestly enough to make it sound quite plausible. But true beauty requires substance, else it fails, becomes something less: mere 'prettiness' — which is, I guess, as good a word for this record as any.
Self-written solo effort from Church guitarist makes one wish he would take a more prominent role in forging that groups' musical identity; songs are a swirling miasma of guitar and melody, not unlike the Church's but more diffuse in an appealing way. Umbrella group's chart presence bodes well for sales.