Bill Orcutt has been defying solo guitar convention for quite a while now, and with his new self-titled record he’s plugged in. Once a member of noise-rock titans Harry Pussy, his subsequent solo releases explored a unique strain of abstraction while tackling a wide array of classic American song. Bill Orcutt extends and refines his sui generis sensibility, and it’s out now on vinyl, compact disc, and digital via Orcutt’s own Palilalia label
Harry Pussy’s contribution to the vastness of the ’90s musical landscape has endured. Combining the abrasion of early No Wave and the extremity of first generation American hardcore (think Teenage Jesus & the Jerks meets Negative Approach), Bill Orcutt, Adris Hoyos and associates proved a tonic for the decade’s rampant Next Big Thing-ism, and skilled musicianship has secured the Miami outfit a high place in the underground canon.
In 2012 Editions Mego reissued Let’s Build a Pussy, and the same year Orcutt unveiled the 2LP compilation One Plus One on Palilalia; it fits nicely beside the prior comps What Was Music? (on Siltbreeze) and You’ll Never Play This Town Again (on Load). In 2015 Superior Viaduct returned the group’s self-titled ’93 debut to print, and earlier this year Palilalia brought out a pair of 7-inches in editions of 100.
Over the last eight years or so, Harry Pussy’s name has been additionally bandied about in relation to Orcutt’s rather unexpected but thoroughly thrilling emergence as a solo artist. Beginning with A New Way to Pay Old Debts in 2009 (released first by Palilalia with Editions Mego reissuing it in ’11), Orcutt began wrangling his Kay acoustic (minus two strings) to uncompromising and wondrously abstract result.
Comparisons have been made to the American Primitive, and that’s on target, as Orcutt has contributed to Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem Vol. 5 comp and has Vol. 10 of Vin Du Select Qualitite’s Solo Acoustic series all to himself. But please understand that he doesn’t specialize in the Guitar Soli friendliness of yore; Orcutt’s playing, thorny, aggressive and loose, is unreservedly experimental in its newness, so if late Fahey isn’t one’s bag, then it’s unlikely Orcutt will be either.
Another point of reference is the late British improv giant Derek Bailey. I mentioned the resemblance when placing Orcutt’s 2013 album of standards at the top of my best new releases of 2013 list for this very website, but in retrospect the distinctiveness of A History of Every One, when considered next to Ballads, Bailey’s 2002 CD of similar intent, is striking. Orcutt’s is certainly the rawer/ wilder of the two, with Ballads a late work presenting Bailey is his most recognizably jazzlike.
A History of Every One maintains its maker’s enigmatic approach, the standards it tackles deriving from sources far less associated with smoky romanticism. There’re two Disney tunes, a minstrel song, Irving Berlin, a Christian hymn, a work song, a union anthem, and some blues, the presence of said form being a constant thread in Orcutt’s solo work; track one on A New Way to Pay Old Debts reassembles “Sad News from Korea” by Lightnin’ Hopkins, while A History of Every One offers a version of Hopkins’ “Bring Me My Shotgun.”
For Bill Orcutt, the Kay is set aside for an electric Telecaster (also two strings light), an instrument previously heard on Colonial Donuts, his excellent 2015 duo slab with drummer Jacob Felix Heule. Amplification does turn up elsewhere; as in the manner of contempo players on the u-ground experimental fringe, Orcutt’s discography is large and diverse of format.
This however, is his first full-length solo studio album on electric guitar, and while continuing to grapple with American popular song in eclectic fashion (returning to tunes previously heard on A History of Every One, the Twenty-Five Songs 7-inch box set, Colonial Donuts, and elsewhere), the results turn a corner that’s somewhat comparable to Bailey’s Ballads, simply due to the possibility that Bill Orcutt will increase its maker’s listenership, and yet are ultimately distinguished through the persistence of blues, electrified here to consistently brilliant effect.
Unsurprisingly, there are new developments, foremost amongst them an opening reading of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” that’s riveting in its extension and transformation of one of American music’s great melodies. It’s followed by “When You Wish Upon a Star,” a chestnut much closer to Orcutt’s American Songbook norm, and indeed reprised from A History of Every One. A recurring adjective describing his song choices is banal, but if not as meditative or transcendent as the Coleman piece, the source is paid no disrespect.
Instead, Orcutt reimagines, invigorates and makes it new in a manner reminiscent of Gertrude Stein’s revitalization of language. If that reads as a far-fetched association, it shouldn’t; A History of Every One’s title is directly related to The Making of Americans, and Stein’s writing is the inspiration behind the 2014 tour tape Gertie Loves Pussy. Don’t misconstrue Orcutt’s moves as highfalutin, for the splendid tranquility of his electric take of “Ol Man River” is anything but.
It sounds hardly at all like The Jeff Beck Group (who recorded it on Truth), nor does the closing “Star Spangled Banner” recollect Hendrix, but the electric nature of the album and Orcutt’s less agitated playing does sometimes register as an extension of late ‘60s progressive blues-rock guitar. I mean, it’s a safe bet that fans of Butterfield’s East-West and Fleetwood Mac’s “Albatross” would dig “Ol Man River.”
The same goes for “The World Without Me,” one of Orcutt’s two originals here, along with “O Platitudes!” This pair lends the LP another beautiful wrinkle; perhaps unshackled by the demands of interpretation, they ring out with depth of feeling and solidify Bill Orcutt as one of the best new releases of 2017.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
