Jim O’Rourke is either a master provocateur or just plain infuriating; it all depends on how you feel about his career as a whole. If you liked his experimental acoustic music with David Grubbs as Gastr Del Sol, you might not have been thrilled with his table-top noise compositions. If you enjoyed his indie-pop albums like Insignificance and Eureka, you might not have appreciated his tenure with Sonic Youth. If you liked his output overall, his hiatus while being Wilco’s go-to producer might have ticked you off. It’s fair to say that you can never be sure what you’ll get from O’Rourke.

When word came down that he was finally recording another album (even though he has been fairly prolific in his side jobs for the intervening eight years, so he has never actually gone away) the immediate impression among the indie-ites was that it would be song-based. They were right (sort of), because his latest, The Visitor, is in fact one song and only one song, lasting near forty minutes. It is not abstract collage or fringe at all; in fact, it’s quite accessible. It’s also completely instrumental. Give with one hand, take with the other.

The Visitor, aside from being one consistent track, acts as a companion piece to his Bad Timing album, also acoustic-rooted and instrumental yet four tracks in length. The flow of the music is that of O’Rourke’s guitar moving into crystalline passages, then getting punctuation from other instruments, then falling back into the guitar. These shifts provide the sense of songs within the piece, but make no mistake about it — this is a single musical statement. Producer O’Rourke gets the best of musician O’Rourke as, around the 19-minute mark, he plays with the piano parts, cutting them digitally to create a staccato, stuttering effect. Laid underneath is a brief electric guitar run, in and out, almost subliminally. Then at 23 minutes in, things subside back into organ wash, acoustic guitar, and it’s on to the next “feel.” (more…)