Long Time By

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This is the second album from the trio called Orso, and a delightful discovery for me. There's some beautiful music here, the pure, ravishing simplicity of the American vernacular reaffirmed yet again by this woven tapestry of piano, banjo, violin, guitar and percussion. It's the basic sound of European folk dances, refracted through 200 years of America's endless spaces and sudden pressures. I guess it's the sound of the stretching, warping, and tearing of numerous immigrant cultural fabrics, when pinned across a landscape suddenly vast, limitless in scale and ambition. Somehow, I'm reminded of the warm, humane, and gently deep resonances of slow, meandering American journeys, such as David Lynch's "The Straight Story", and indeed Jonathan Raban's brilliant book "Bad Land", concerning exactly that tension of the human scale forcibly planted within the vastness of the mid-West. There's a space, history, and dignity to the sounds Orso play with, no matter how ramshackle. The band also have a sophisticated side which isn't afraid of studio jiggery-pokery, providing echoed aural curios in tracks like "Conference Room", the endearingly unhinged "Logs#1", and the wheezing steampunk "Slight Return", sounding somewhat like Raban's 19th century railroad snaking across Montana. Amidst all the warmly humorous, appealing tunes, there's occasionally room for a hint of Badlands Texas Chainsaw Blair Witch Deliverance menace - ragged shreds of noise draped in the shadows at the back of the shack, eerie curlicues skittering around the bulrushes.

However, lest I get too po-faced here, this is also a grinning, downright-fun record. Most of all, there's a bunch of songs here. Songs to sing along with. Phil Spirito's songs in fact. He wrote the words, takes the lead vocals, and indulges in much guitar/banjo action. Gillian Lisée takes keyboards, guitars, banjos and vocals in hand, and Ben Massarella drums. They're the basic tools at hand, but the roll-call of noise-makers used on the album is almost endless ("melodica, piano strings, rattling and shaking, office chair, tuning pegs, glass, 55 gallon drum" etc.). And they're joined, such is the way of these things, by an itinerant band of musicians including Brian Deck's electronics and mixing, Tim Rutili's guitar and piano, Duke Lee on glockenspiel and duketronics(!), Julie Liu on viola, Greg Ratajczak's Fender VI, and Kelly McCracken on cello, all or none of whom may or may not have played in some or several other Perishable bands, possibly for example Rex, Red Red Meat, Califone and HIM.

Tom Waits is clearly a touchstone, and why not? The shambolic, vaudeville songs recall the folksier, carnival freakshow side to Waits ouvre, and whilst Spirito's idiosyncratic baritone will put some off, for me it shares with Waits' voice a richly-smoked, growling depth and gently wayward approach to melody. Like early Springsteen for that matter ("Wild Billy's Circus Story" anyone?). Though occasionally arch, Spirito is utterly engaging, particularly on ballads such as the truly lovely "Well" or "Circle R". Waits' resourceful rural approach to sound-making is also present - elsewhere Dirty Three or Yo La Yengo might spring to mind - yet the sound is really all Orso's. It's a wholly successful attempt to draw the honest charm of Americana into 2000, and it's great.