REVIEW: Jim O'Rourke, Eureka (Drag City)
- Kerwin So
The words "modern day music renaissance man" roll awkwardly off the tongue, but they will be uttered anyway. It would be nearly impossible to discuss one Jim O'Rourke-- a fixture of the flourishing and incestuous Chicago music colony-- without mentioning the vast range of past and present work he has done in the musical spectrum, from production and composing gigs to remixing projects and a glut of releases, both as a band member and under his own name. O'Rourke was one-half of recently deceased avant-rock favorite Gastr del Sol, as well as a past member of post-psychedelic" pioneers the Red Krayola. He has remixed and/or worked with a slew of near- household names, including Stereolab, Smog, John Fahey, Tortoise, and High Llamas. And he has created countless recordings of musique concrete and similarly obscure experimental music that most of us will probably never hear.
Okay, fine, we got that out of the way. So the guy is an accomplished and, in some circles, even a revered musician. That doesn't necessarily mean that the creative work he produces himself actually bears artistic fruit or is, to use the slightly condescending term, "accessible." The good news is that even with the introduction of vocals (not an O'Rourke staple), Eureka does not grate the ear of your average listener. Far from it. Sure, O'Rourke's voice sounds like what you'd think a music geek with horn-rimmed glasses would sound like -- somewhat high and nasal -- but it rarely gets in the way, even when he sings the same refrain over and over 30-some-odd times, as in the album's dork-folk epic opener "Women of the World." Although the overall feel of this record could (very) loosely be described as lounge pop (particularly with the blaring bossa cover of Burt Bacharach's "Something Big" spiking the album mid-way through), such a conclusion might cause one to miss the more affecting spaces where O'Rourke lets the music speak solely for itself.
This is not an album to be divided up into singles. Only by listening to it in its entirety can you catch the lush, melancholy keyboard arrangements scattered throughout, which, when leavened with french horns, saxophones and clarinets, sound almost goofy at times, yet still moving. O'Rourke makes his point over eight songs and moves on: the final track "Happy Holidays" ends decisively with the line "I only came to leave," reminding us once again that O'Rourke will constantly be moving on to the next musical project. He may be a part of the "musical elite," but Eureka is still something that most of us can grab hold of.
