Editorial Reviews Music Review:
Music Review
Rita Dove & Amnon Wolman: Thomas and Beulah [Enhanced]
Secondhand Sounds: Herbert Remixes
Songbook Chico Buarque V.2 [Import]
Soak Up the Sun [CD-single] [Import]
Amazon.com
Guitarist Jim O'Rourke is best known as half of Gastr del Sol, one of the finest workaday avant post-rock outfits around. But O'Rourke is also a serious guitarophile, equally awestruck by John Fahey's open-ended takes on rural and Delta blues, and by Derek Bailey's unwavering free improvisation. O'Rourke's Bad Timing is replete with twisty blues plucking that spins like a series of tops winding around on a well-polished floor. The melodic lines O'Rourke concocts as a soloist on "There's Hell in Hello but More in Goodbye" are unnerving in their clarity and precision, not to mention their close-hewn structural integrity. And the rest of Bad Timing is all about construction: building an acoustic session out of various horns, guitar, piano, hints of percussion, and an ear for both ambient music and absolute sound. O'Rourke keeps enough delicacy in Bad Timing that it'll be plenty safe sound furniture, but when you listen up, the details will blow you away. --Andrew Bartlett