Bill Orcutt is one of this spinning rock’s finest living guitarists. This is in part due to work that’s been rigorous and constantly evolving since his reemergence on the scene in the late ’00s. It’s been ten years since his solo acoustic record A History of Every One, and on April 28 his next solo acoustic record, Jump on It, is available on vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Orcutt’s label Palilalia. The stated progressions of the guitarist’s music has brought him to a place of overt beauty across the 11 tracks of his latest, while losing none of his creative vigor.
On September 2, 2022, Bill Orcutt released Music for Four Guitars, an unabashedly experimental record and one of the best of its year, though I’ll confess that I didn’t play it for the first time until January 2 of 2023. There was no reason for the delay other than there being SO MANY NEW RECORDS to consider, a situation that can be difficult to navigate but far preferable to a dearth of new music in the racks.
But I bring up Music for Four Guitars mainly because of its experimental approach, the four guitars all played by Orcutt in a manner that’s a little like 1980s King Crimson under the spell of Steve Reich; that is, cyclical and precise, though Orcutt’s pieces for the album (14 in all) are rawer and denser. At times, I also thought of Noveller (the project of guitarist Sarah Lipstate) and ol’ Captain Beefheart.
Music for Four Guitars was recorded in the spring and summer of 2021 at the Living Room in San Francisco. In the spring and summer of 2022, Jump on It was cut in the same locale, and my immediate impression was what a difference a year makes. Music for Four Guitars is raggedly minimalist (housed in a cover paying homage to Randy Newman’s Sail Away) and Jump on It is in the ballpark of Guitar Soli.
This is not to say that Orcutt has went full Takoma Records on us, but there are some affinities (and Orcutt did contribute to Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem Vol. 5), foremost the sustained passages of beauty throughout the record. A difference is that Orcutt essentially eschews the dexterous fingerpicking that is a major facet of the American Primitive experience. In its place is an ambience similar to what Fripp conjured on Evening Star, his collab with Eno.
However, while Jump on It is often pretty, it avoids the delicate, instead opting for intensity that crests through the familiar Orcutt-ian string tangles in “The Life of Jesus,” “New Germs,” “In a Column of Air,” and closer “Before I Go.” Plus, “In a Column of Air” and “Music That Fights Back” get into some pattern repetition that’s reminiscent of Music for Four Guitars, and that’s sweet.
Jump on It is a consistently intimate affair (something it shares with the best Guitar Soli), a quality that’s magnified by Orcutt’s occasional audible breathing. This intimacy wouldn’t much matter if he was playing a bunch of tired-assed junk, but that’s emphatically not the case here. Jump on It is Orcutt’s most accessible recording to date, but it’s also an absolute gem.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
