Bill Orcutt | Palilalia Records
January 16, 2012
“ No one is playing acoustic guitar like Bill Orcutt right now. No one.
Lars Gotrich writing about How The Thing Sings at NPR
“ Perhaps the meaning of Orcutt’s highly personal blues is not to be found either in the sounds of his guitar (fingered or struck) or in his voice (sung or grunted), but in the exertion and motions of a live body recorded in real time and space: the blues as dance.
Ian Latta reviewing How The Thing Sings on Tiny Mix Tapes
“ It’s tempting to focus solely on the adrenaline rush of Orcutt’s playing, and let it all fly by like a stoner zoning out to Jackson Pollock’s splattery paintings or Stan Brakhage’s color-filled abstract films. That’s a fine way to experience Orcutt’s music, but there also seems to be a lot of intense thought going on behind his impulsive acoustic clatter. Maybe that’s why his solo acoustic work has so far had a lot more staying power than the fleeting pleasures of a single trip.
Marc Masters writing about How The Thing Sings on Pitchfork
“ If you’re gonna play the blues you have to somehow address the fact that you’re not Robert Johnson
Interview with Bill Orcutt in October’s Wire. (PDF)
July 8, 2011
“ Four more sides of a carpenter sawing through your psyche. Bill Orcutt’s visceral threnodies alternate between barbed wire and lonesome lunar baying, maybe with a bit more separation between the styles than what was found on A New Way to Pay Old Debts. Here we sense skill turning into mastery, a language being refined after its creation. Orcutt still leaves the dried blood on the strings of that hotrodded Kay acoustic, and he walks right up and smacks you in the face on “Bored with the Moon” (listen, you’ll hear what I mean).
Review by Doug Mosurock in Dusted
May 8, 2011
Bill Orcutt – interview for the Athens-based blog 06:00am

Bill Orcutt – interview for the Athens-based blog 06:00am

“ Orcutt’s playing expands on concrete moments, historical or temporary. There is a grounded, mono-chordal sanity even to his more free pieces, and his periodic non-word moans and shouts bring an eerie hoodoo feel to the set (which The Wire referred to at the time as Orcutt’s “spooky boogie”), as if trying to channel the same angels or demons that Fahey tried to evoke with his motel room Tuva throat singing.
Mike Wood writing about A New Way To Pay Old Debts in Perfect Sound Forever
March 20, 2011
“ On A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Orcutt is at it again with a four-string guitar, this time bending blues and folk in ways they weren’t originally meant to go. Wrinkled riffs twist like wayward roots, punctured by thorny protrusions and unexpected potholes. Notes are warped and strangled, rhythms bruised and battered, all resulting in a sound at the outer edges of the Americana family tree… The traditions informing Orcutt’s playing, from those of pioneering bluesmen to John Fahey and other forward-thinking folk, are referenced in fleeting fragments, like images distorted and barely visible in a broken mirror.
Review by Adam Strohm in Dusted.
Bill Orcutt interviewed on Resonance FM. Adventures in Modern Music 3 March: This week we talk guitars with former Harry Pussy cohort, Bill Orcutt. He’ll be on the phone from his home in San Francisco discussing guitarists including Scott Dunbar, Carlos Montoya, James Blood Ulmer, Joseph Spence, Derek Bailey and Fred Gerlach, and we’ll be playing an extensive selection of his favourite recordings. 3 March, 9pm (BST), 104.4 FM for Londoners, streamed live at resonancefm.com. [Archive: http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/5949/]

Bill Orcutt interviewed on Resonance FM.

Adventures in Modern Music 3 March: This week we talk guitars with former Harry Pussy cohort, Bill Orcutt. He’ll be on the phone from his home in San Francisco discussing guitarists including Scott Dunbar, Carlos Montoya, James Blood Ulmer, Joseph Spence, Derek Bailey and Fred Gerlach, and we’ll be playing an extensive selection of his favourite recordings. 3 March, 9pm (BST), 104.4 FM for Londoners, streamed live at resonancefm.com. [Archive: http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/5949/]

February 17, 2011
“ And yet it’s pretty indisputable that he’s chanced on a sound that’s almost unique to him, and probably almost inimitable too. Very few guitarists manage something like that, and if these unmappable acres of Delta knotweed scare and infuriate any blooze trad-dads by the by, well I can’t imagine that keeping the Harry Pussy dude up all night with worry.
A New Way to Pay Old Debts reviewed on The Quietus