e’ve never known quite what to expect from Jim O’Rourke. He is scarily prolific, releasing two full-length albums (and who knows how much other material) in less than one month, this last month. His work from the past shows a scattered philosophy, nine minutes of feedback followed by a beautiful piano interlude was quite common. You can imagine that he’s the kind of guy who enjoys to shock the public with his musical indecisiveness. So it is with his latest solo release that we get the biggest shock of all, a laid-back indie-rock album. The guitars do not typically squeak or shout, we have no woodwind drones and there is zero screaming. Jim digs into his mind and pulls out some great tunes from 1995 that Pavement never wrote. He delivers shockingly straightforward lyrics with a voice that at times recalls Vic Chesnutt with his rural concentration. His lyrics are pretty neat, from the first few seconds he tells us not to trust him, of course we’re going to listen intently from there, if only to see how he’s planning to deceive us. His arrangements are clever, without being too panderingly poppy. Remnants of his work with experimental group Gastr Del Sol pop up in small bits in the arrangements, a short bout of characteristic dissonance, or perhaps a bizarre phrasing.


‘Memory Lane’ begins with a simple guitar and piano poking out a simple two-note motif. This is a great example of O’Rourke’s musical trickery, a lesser band playing this kind of intro with this kind of music would take the easy way out, simply putting distortion to the tune to create some illusion of progress, but O’Rourke surprises us by keeping the dynamic level sensible. The rest of the song is great, ‘looking at you reminds me of looking at the sun for too long’ he sings before the song segues into a quiet acoustic passage with O’Rourke harmonizing with himself, this particular portion recalling some of the more angelic Simon and Garfunkel tunes.


Master musician O’Rourke’s latest album plays like a really good indie rock album. Part of the mastery is that he acknowledges this irrelevance of this accomplishment with the disc’s title, though those that listen will know better.