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It's pop Jim, but not as we know it. And pigeonholes be damned as O'Rourke's latest excursion takes his trusty guitar technique (Quick! Passing reference point, John Fahey. Grab him!) and introduces it to the lush, the layered, the laid-back and the lyrically loquacious (can I stop now?). The ensuing assemblage boasts an inordinate measure of delicacies which, from the hypnotic repetition of its near nine minute opener Women of the World (sole lyric 'Women of the World take over, 'cause if you don't the world will come to an end, and it won't take long') with it's Aerial M-like guitar motif, to its corny Dylan meets Wilson sub-two minute closer, Happy Holidays, contains enough revelatory (obviously) moments (the David Sanborn-plays-Carole King-in-a-jazz-mood-with-steel-drums of Through The Night Slowly, the delicate swing of the Arto Lindsay-esque Ghost Ship in a Storm) to placate the ear-candy craving child in all of us. Headphone heaven.

Matt Dornan
CWAS #4 - Winter 1998/9 - The Lost Issue

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