Bill Orcutt – How to Rescue Things | Album Review
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Palilalia
Over a decade after the dissolution of his legendary noise trio Harry Pussy, Bill Orcutt re-emerged as a dark horse contender for preeminent interpreter of traditional American music. Armed with little more than recording equipment and his trusty four-stringed guitars, Orcutt breathed new life into old songs, filtering rumbling blues through the atonal improvisations of Derek Bailey. These albums often expanded into meta-commentary on the idea of the “American” song; their tracklists would mix spirituals, Disney songs, Tin Pan Alley, and more, all unified by how Orcutt would obliterate the basic structure of his selections.
Orcutt’s self-titled 2017 release opens with a rendition of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.” In the 50s and 60s, Coleman reframed the American music of his own time, leading a groundbreaking jazz quartet with no piano, untethering the music from a tonal center. He’s a clear forebear for a musician like Orcutt, whose interpretations are even further ungrounded from their source material. But Coleman notably rejected playing standards from the outset of his career, opting to compose all the tunes on his records at a time when even his most talented peers were putting their spins on Rodgers and Hammerstein. Coleman’s brilliance yielded exactly one elevation into “standard” territory of his own: the aforementioned “Lonely Woman.”
How to Rescue Things, released late last year, is Orcutt’s third solo album of originals in as many years. It’s also the most melodic music of his career, wedding his searing leads to dulcet strings pilfered from an RCA easy-listening collection. These sweeping arrangements have historical precedent in jazz, too: think Charlie Parker with Strings or maybe Lady in Satin. But those albums used strings as accompaniments, extra tonality, and shorthand for feelings already being evoked by the soloist. Orcutt is operating from inside these arrangements even as he often soars above them. His improvisatory approach has the effect of foregrounding the chord changes under him; it’s as if he is accompanying them.
On “Old Hamlet,” for instance, Orcutt slowly builds up to a wail over plucked harp, as if his guitar were deep in existential thought. Suddenly he recedes, quietly but insistently strumming each note several times, blending his instrument’s timbre with the background, almost pleading. Several tracks later, the weeping orchestra of “Requiem in Dust” is too loud to be drowned out, so Orcutt wages war from within, building to a long stretch of repetition wherein he completely abandons the harmonic structure in a moment akin to running up a down escalator.
These string backing tracks on their own conjure up the romanticism of a bygone era: New York City in the fall, a stiff drink in a smoky bar. Orcutt’s additions disrupt the nostalgia but don’t necessarily refute it. Rather, it begs the question, “What exactly are we remembering?” Were these the true experiences of our friends, of our parents, of their parents? Or was it simply a dream sold to them by television programs and glossy magazine ads? Is the American Dream crumbling before our very eyes? Even the idea that one could once live out the Horatio Alger myth grows increasingly shambolic. The building is collapsing, the chandelier in the lobby is about to give way. Perhaps taking a sledgehammer to the foundation is the wisest course.
But listening to the closer “The Wild Psalms” as it descends into a noisy squall over a string sequence fit for Hollywood credits, one gets the sense that Orcutt finds the swaying chandelier in the decrepit old structure oddly beautiful. Perhaps How to Rescue Things is a double entendre: a way to improve upon the schmaltzy cast-off recordings from days of yore, sure, but also a model for finding beauty in a world as it disintegrates. Orcutt has written a fine set of swan songs for the country amidst its death march, and in doing so, he may finally have made his own entry into the American canon.
