There’s just...something about multi-instrumental solo artists.

Oh sure, Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. is a gifted musician and arranger. He’s made his bones at this stage not only through his work with Jellyfish, but as a sideman to – among others – Johnny Cash, Paris Hilton, Cheap Trick, Air, Beck and Morrissey, both live and in studio. He’s cut his teeth from every angle, to the point that a solo effort seemed nothing short of the logical next step in the progression.

And Catnip Dynamite sure delivers. But something intangible bleeds through in the instrumentation that screams “I played EVERYTHING on this set.”

That isn’t a bad thing. But like listening to Prince, it’s hard to ignore his stamp on every single thing, as opposed to an artist who came in and let studio musicians do their thing while he focused on producing and writing.

This sort of dreamy pop isn’t a bad thing. "Love's Never Half as Good" feels like a throwaway Monkees cut – but then again, go try and find someone who really hates the Monkees. Leading off the set, the quickening is an almost ‘80s-style stomping piece of power-pop.

There’s an underlying nerdy quirkiness, no matter the style Manning chooses, that makes this effort hard to hate. He’s a tad schizophrenic, which makes it hard to really tag this set with a label for future reference. There’s almost an excess of quirky variety that doesn’t help the collection find much unity. Yet, "Down in Front," the go-go-ready "Imaginary Friend" and "Love's Never Half as Good" both feel single-ready, but only slightly more so than anything else.

Eventually, the set just feels like Manning throwing every dreamy, perky pop morsel in his arsenal at a stark white wall, in the hopes something will stick and stand out as a signature signal. The songs aren’t quite long enough, epic enough or prog enough to say this has AOR appeal. There isn’t exactly an epic concept-album unity.

Ask yourself one question when considering this: do I listen to cohesive albums in one sitting, or do I like putting hundreds or thousands of songs of varying identities on random and seeing what develops? The latter will love Catnip Dynamite because they’ll be cool with the fact there’s no unifying trait to any two consecutive songs, save for Manning’s endearing nerdy whine. The former will just give up because, while every song is enjoyable in its own way, no one thing holds everything together stylistically.

Clearly, this will be a love-it-or-leave-it proposition for just about everybody.

Review by: Sean Comer

Additional links:
- Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. on Myspace
- Roger Joseph Manning, Jr's official website