Album Reviews

Jim O’Rourke’s latest solo release, his first in nearly a decade, is a bold act in today’s dumbed down, sonically parched musical environment.

(O'Rourke is a busy man, of course, collaborating with dozens if not hundreds of musicians on various projects, both as a musician and producer).

The instrumental music is subtle and understated. The recording is stunning and the packaging harkens back to vinyl’s heyday.

The album is not available on MP3 and O’Rourke requests that you “please listen on speakers, loud.” It's sad that request has to be made. Devo was right. However, while loud works, so does soft and in any case very loud isn’t required or desirable. In fact, this is best listened to late at night at moderate levels, lights out so you can pay full attention.

This record is meant to be listened to, not just heard, which is a distinction lost on a generation or two of music consumers.

The antecedents might be John Fahey, Sandy Bull, John Renbourn, Brian Eno or any instrumentalist who specializes in long, spiraling, contemplative, abstract works. You won’t be humming.

Instead, the impressionistic, physically graceful structure unfolds in an endless shifting profusion of colors and moods without resolving fully, either musically or emotionally.

Though it glides through a series of emotions ranging from wonderment to consternation, they are both understated and fleeting. Like cloud-watching, O’Rourke drifts seamlessly from one musical set piece to the next leaving you unaware of the shift until you suddenly recognize you’re somewhere new and wonder how you got there.

As the forty minute or so piece, recorded in Tokyo, navigates along bucolic American and spare Japanese musical contours, O’Rourke uses a deft arranging and composing hand to seamlessly and subtly shift tempi, textures and instrumentation. While the mood is often calmative it’s never “new agey” or bland and remains more abstract than overtly suggestive.

It may take more than a few plays for the structure and intent to sink in but once it does, repeated plays only reinforce the depth of thinking that went into a work that’s more complex, ingenious and especially coherent than it may at first sound.

Even the first play will tell you the recording is astonishingly good, regardless of how it was accomplished. Its vivid three-dimensionality, breathtaking delicacy, tonal and textural purity and Saran Wrap-like transparency will drop you in your listening seat. Few recordings of this quality get released into the popular music world today (using the word “popular” for lack of a better word), though O'Rourke has a hand in many that do.

O’Rourke’s compositional and arranging skills plus the superb sound and packaging make this easily one of last year’s finest and most rewarding albums. It demands a quiet pressing and even the pressing plant cooperated. Really, don’t miss this, I don’t care what your musical tastes are.