Singer/songwriter Paul Manousos seems to have suffered writer’s block on the way to his third solo album, C’mon, C’mon, hitting a wall after writing four slow songs (“Outside of Town,” “R.E.D.,” “Kindly Said,” and “Getting Out”). Then, “in a not-quite-simple twist of fate,” he writes in his liner notes, “i came across my dandelion sitting in the morning sun finally willing to let her words spill onto my notebooks. there we were, and then endymion havisham became. in that guise we conjured the rest. hidden treasure.” Apparently conflated of the mythological eternal youth Endymion (who also inspired John Keats) and Dickens’ character Miss Havisham from Great Expectations (both, as it happens, figures suffering from arrested development), Manousos’ new alter ego went on to write the other five original songs on C’mon, C’mon, which is completed by a faithful revival of the hit Glen Campbell arrangement of Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman.” Havisham, it turns out, is a livelier writer than Manousos under his real name, and the Havisham songs, when they turn up, always inject energy into the album. But by whatever name, the singer/songwriter continues to conjure up major influences like Elvis Costello (lead-off track “Getting Better” could slot onto My Aim Is True easily) and Bruce Springsteen (“R.E.D.”), while singing in a nasal whine with phrasing that suggests he learned his craft by listening to old Rolling Stones albums. The result is as engaging as it is derivative, and three albums in, Manousos should be asserting his own identity a little more clearly by now. But then, maybe his next album will be credited entirely to Endymion Havisham, which, from the evidence here, might not be a bad idea. – William Ruhlmann
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