“Way Down South” reviewed in November’s Wire
The re-emergence of the ex-Harry Pussy guitarist as an acoustic player is perhaps the most unlooked-for development of the last several years. He creates a unique vocabulary by the same means as he did in the electric context of his previous group – minimal stringing. I have never seen him play a guitar with more than four strings. This speaks volumes both for Orcutt’s understanding of his instrument (a vintage Kay acoustic) and his deep understanding of his chosen tradition. Having witnessed the concert documented on this single-sided LP at the High St Project space in Christchurch, New Zealand, I can confirm that he is both a consummate instrumentalist and a hell of a performer.
Compared to his album A New Way To Pay Old Debts,the sound is softer and less close-miked, but his playing is surer and more developed in its voice. Orcutt references an eclectic bunch of American touchstones such as the Dagget St recordings of Loren Connors, Lightning Hopkins and John Fahey, but his harmonic intuition and woodcutting approach to playing (his guitar is the timber, his hand the axe), stakes him out a territory that is all his own. The thrashing of the open strings in the closing cut reveals harmonic overtones that echo pipe organ music, and demonstrate that Orcutt’s primary engagement is with sounds in acoustic space, no matter what kind of guitar he’s playing.
Lester Bangs in his epochal review of Fun House told a story about Cecil Taylor playing with a bass player who had no conventional musical training, but who was creating a new vocabulary from the ground up. In the context of the new tradition which he sensed starting from that album, Bangs described “something…beginning to take shape which, though erratic, was unique in all this world”. 40 years later we can hear what he foresaw in sides like this being cut by someone from a generation whose understanding of music is emphatically post-Stooges. This is acoustic music that paradoxically references both the skronk of rock and the freedom of jazz, without losing touch with its roots in the blues. It’s fair to say that what Orcutt is doing here is indeed something unique in all this world. Bruce Russell
1 year ago