Cooking something delicious doesn’t always require a heaping load of ingredients. Some of the best things I’ve ever tasted have been intelligently prepared single-food items.
For example, take an eggplant. Cut it in half and slather both open sides with olive oil until they are visibly yellowed by absorption. Add salt, pepper and a few red pepper flakes. Put it in the oven at 350˚ until a fork can ease softly into its cooked center. It’ll taste great, but keep in mind – you must use a prime eggplant.
Bad Timing is Jim O’Rourke’s eggplant dish, and he’s working with a
mighty fine vegetable.
O’Rourke’s produce is a drawn out and looped acoustic guitar, forming a seamless base structure for him to noodle and add/subtract over. It’s an eggplant grown on John Fahey’s musical farm, harkening back to Blind Joe Death/Dance of Death-era guitarage.
O’Rourke’s meticulous finger picking sets up an appetizing base. Keeping the ingredients to the bare minimum, he uses only what’s necessary to make the dish better as a whole. He drops in a dash of piano, a hint of synthesizer, and a sprinkling of electric and lap steel guitars. All of which take his creation to a new and gently celebratory place.
Subtlety dominates this record, but keep in mind there’s a very fine line between screaming by whispering and just quietly talking to yourself. What’s wonderful is how easy you lose yourself -- in a similar manner to listening to Neu! or even minimalists such as Burning Star Core or Keith Fullerton Whitman. Its droning simplicity makes you long for change, and when it comes, you’re gloriously uplifted.
“There’s Hell in Hello But More in Goodbye” meanders on Fahey’s farm for a significant amount of time and falls purposefully into a drone simmer that’s eventually built upon and explored. The less invasive “Bad Timing” also starts out with intriguing acoustic ramblings but systematically falls into a beautiful Alice in Wonderland wormhole, complete with ghostly feedback and snowy xylophone.
The larger tracks, “94 The Long Way” and the aptly named “Happy Trails,” start off with similar structures but launch off into a less drone-happy arena. “94 The Long Way” almost doesn’t make it out of the gate as O’Rourke fumbles with his eggplant -- it chugs on through, however, gaining firm footing. It’s reminiscent of that feeling you get at the beginning of a long journey: that early moment of anxiety that’s finally put at ease with the first rush of excitement when you hit the highway and smile triumphantly as you head off down the road.
“Happy Trails” offers the reverse, exploring that moment when you reach your destination and everyone is waiting for you in a big, over-the-top parade of waving friends. Its explosive opening is a realization that your trip has come to an end, evoking memories and finally focusing on the brave new world ahead. That world, moved ahead by the fun-loving drumming of Tortoise’s John McEntire, is a schlocky, Reno-esque commercial cowboy freak show, complete with horns and slide guitar. It’s fun as hell, but you have to wonder, "What the hell am I doing here?"
Getting back to the first analogy, this album’s base is the simple eggplant, but the constant building and taking away makes it dense with taste and information. O’Rourke is a master chef – not only with eggplant but with a lush variety of foodstuffs. In a time of fast food, tofu, and super expensive crap, this is an all together rare treat, so make sure you cherish this one, my fellow foodies.
