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Q MAGAZINE - February 2001
With this, Darryl Purpose graduates from being a professional winner of US songwriting competitions to stake his claim as America’s most original narrative songwriter since Harry Chapin. The stories which drive these largely acoustic songs are extraordinary in their scope, argument and treatment. “Mr. Schwinn was as thin as a pelican’s grin” begins a tale of unrequited love in a bicycle repair shop. Child Of Hearts eavesdrops on the unsentimental first meeting between a girl and her father (“you are big and scary and almost never home”), then there’s the obsessive love of Annieland, the bristling sentimentality of The Last Great Kiss Of The 20th Century, and a gorgeous, stately wedding duet with Lucy Kaplansky. Such heart-on-sleeve balladry always courts disaster - that Traveler’s Code never comes close only reinforces the triumph. (4 star rating)
—Rob Beattie |
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