by Rick Anderson

The whole one-man-band idea is fraught with peril. No matter how talented a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist you are, it's always helpful to have a few other people around you while you work out your songs. For one thing, they bring their own strengths and help you round out the songs' concepts and structure. For another thing, they'll usually let you know when you're being a jackass. But sometimes -- note Rocket Summer -- a one-man band can work deliriously well. The debut album by Love Arcade, the stage moniker of a 19-year-old kid who otherwise goes simply by the name Christian, isn't an instantly ingratiating success like Rocket Summer's first album was, but it's not the kind of self-indulgent wankery that you start hearing from Prince every time he fires his band, either. He has, bless him, a sense of humor, which is what redeems the otherwise terminally goofy "Party." He also has a genuinely surprising and (unless he attended a conservatory at a ridiculously young age) intuitive ability to write for strings; the backing arrangement on "Moses" is simply brilliant. But most of the time what he has is a great pop sense, and a cunning ability to balance sonic messiness with tight underlying structure; note in particular the mannered but quite irresistible "Keep It Coming" and the explicitly Clash-influenced "Can't Stop." Not everything works, but most of it does. Not only is he just 19, he played all the instruments and sang all the parts himself.