Time Of Orchids

Time Of Orchids “Darling Abandon”

from Namesake Caution (Cuneiform)

dreamatics vs. schematics// Out Sept. 18

(orig. pub. late Aug. or early Sept. 2008)                          

Since 1999, Time Of Orchids have specialized in both rude and beautiful sounds, fighting and travelling together. Their tracks seem like wrestling scripts in code, cracked on cue, but not too easily. These secret treaties seem to seek to critique the pageantry and plains, of public and private domains, the implications of alt-to-arena rock and prog alike. Like, when you get the girl, the gold, the God, the math, the good grief (if you’re emo), when you take the perfect hit and reach the shining peak---great, but what happens next? The next day, next night, next minute. What have you done for us lately? The meter’s always running. Et cetera. Cliches that settle in, the more you scratch that itch.

 Not that they’re complaining, at least not plainly. But looking back, over older tracks, posted across the Cyberverse, you may well catch them reaching a moment when foes have been flung clean out of the ring. The same moment when another time signature starts twitching like an irritable bowel, waiting in the wings.

 Time Of Orchids’ latest album, Namesake Caution, begins and ends, like the (possibly?) bi-planetary, bi-everything city in Samuel Delany’s novel Dhalgren, with a loop of perspective, carrying a caravan of seekers. Who enter via “In Color Captivating” and “Windswept Spectacle,” and are last glimpsed somewhere in the vast and pearly back orifice of “Entertainment Woes.” Wise men baring gifts: synthesizers and high voices stream like dusty light, through star-bearing trees and the window blinds of a B-movie motel. Dusty light, including that of the lyrics, is perhaps unneeded, seemingly unheeded, (yet never shaken) by bass and drums, growling and prowling and chopping and splashing through phrases burnt curt by the guitar’s low flame, which can ill and spill into fuzz and sustain.

But about 2/3s of the way through the fractal forest, the complexity collapses into complication, and rock is no longer an implied (or anyway inferred) subject, it’s a reflexive resource, tapped more times than co-founding bassist Jesse Krakow’s Chapman stick (the basic specs of Namesake Caution always include reminders of ‘70s [Yesian helium vocals, moonlit Synergyesque synths] times ‘80s [King Crimson’s knotty rhythm section of Tony Levin and Bill Bruford, the latter of whom was also in early ‘70s Yes: another loop[)(And the better moments can pass through the roller coaster solar system of John McLaughlin’s  Devotion, as well as his sojourn with Tony Williams Lifetime. Plus: afterimages of the Beach Boys, channeled via a bit less lungpower, but more collective brainpower.) The default: bash brilliant (or at least flashy) bits through  (or at least way into) the stop-start traffic jam, power through to spooky fades, pick up the ball and pitch again. No doubt it’s all good for some, but seems like you gotta be really into prog, really into Time Of Orchids, really into collecting everything on Cuneiform Records. None of which is (necessarily) bad, but ultimately this album gets stuck in the kind of specialized appeal that tends to come from sounds associated with the quest for transcendence. Quests are always risky, but the frustrations are so familiar.

More intruders in the moondust might help. Previous albums have been accosted by: Marilyn Crispell, the avant-jazz pianist; the B-52s’ wailin’ Kate Pierson; and: cosmic roadhouse chanteuse Julee Cruise, of Twin Peaks fame (She’s also sung with the B-52s, as the convergences continue to rise). Or never mind the neighbors from Neptune, just unleash whichever Orchid broke through the 2004 track, “Banquet For Back Of Neck,” currently posted on their Myspace, bellowing, “I can’t afford, I can’t avoid work!” High anxiety, misted by higher voices, in measured tones, so soothing, as they search for just the right point at which to slip a needle into the Savage’s quivering hide. Bring back that guy! Just for a moment, okay?

Yet before the 2/3 mark of this set, which is, say, track 8, out if 10, which makes the ratio, uh—well, this non- math-rockhead did find himself pulled from the grave of taste (you know, the kind marked by the conventional geezercore of review-scribbler’s epitaph: Velvets, Stooges, P-Funk, Miles, etc). For instance, our featured track,  “Darling Abandon,” throws flashlights and boots and bouquets and moonbeams at Time Of Orchids’ elusive stalker-muse, who is serenaded lovingly, addressed truthfully: “Darling Abandon, your extreme, knows no bounds, and forces you madly, through passages of ashy drudgery, to scheme, beckoning. In time, your weapon grows for you; in time, your weapon crows for you; in time, your weapon grows for you; in time, your weapon goes for you…” Yeah, after a while, it’s as plain as the nose on your mirror.