ORCUTT, BILL - Bill Orcutt

"For those not following Bill Orcutts drift into increasingly ear-friendly orbits in his recent live sets, Bill Orcutt -- his first solo electric studio album -- shocks with its space and sensitivity. On this eponymous record, Orcutt mines the expansiveness and sustain possible on the electric guitar, letting notes spin out and decay at the edge of feedback. His pachinko-parlor pacing, marked by unraveling clockspring accelerandos crashing into unexpectedly suspended tones, is still in evidence. But here, his developing melodicism maps a near-contemplative mental realm, orbiting St. Joan-era Loren Connors more than the cascading treble clatter of his duo LPs with Chris Corsano and others. From the first notes of Ornette Colemans Lonely Woman", theres a lucidity and slow-burning lyricism that make Orcutts plunges into barbed-wire fingerpicking all the more striking. While no ones about to mistake Orcutt for Jim Hall, you could probably play this for your jazzbo friends (should you be un