As a lifelong Midwesterner just back from my first trip to New York-- my mind all abuzz with comparisons, my heart torn between the city I know and love and the city I'd only just begun to discover-- the last thing I needed was to arrive back in Chicago to the news that Jim O'Rourke, one of the city's finest and most ubiquitous musicians was taking off for the Big Apple, leaving nothing but a string of bile-flavored words about the Windy City and its musicians in his wake.
And then along came the new album. From the very start, Insignificance comes across as yet another spit in the face, as O'Rourke's ever-steady voice intones the following: "Don't believe a word I say/ Never thought you would anyway/ I may be insincere/ But it's all downhill from here." Upon hearing this, I was furious. His initial comments-- which essentially left the city's music scene for long-dead-- were bad enough, but now he seemed to be asking me to ignore them, to write them off as, well, insignificant. What gall. This was where I drew the line.
Immediately I conjured an image of O'Rourke the Rock Star. It wasn't just the uncharacteristically loud electric guitar and wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am drums that burst from the speakers the moment I popped in Insignificance and pressed play. It was the lyrics. I've always had a tremendous amount of respect for O'Rourke the musician, no matter my feelings about O'Rourke the media figure, and I've always been thankful that the two have never crossed paths. But Insignificance crosses that line again and again. "If I seem to you a bit remote/ You'll feel better if you call me a misanthrope/ Well, what ever floats your boat/ But as for me, I'd rather sink my own," he continues on the album opener, "All Downhill From Here," just as the feedback gives way to calm vibes and piano. While O'Rourke's lyrics typically revel in playful ambiguity, these come across as a dreadfully obvious response to his own less-than-favorable image. Frankly, I hadn't the patience.
While generally less envelope-pushing then his more difficult-to-find work, O'Rourke's string of Drag City releases have always served as an opportunity to try on an assortment of masks. Bad Timing was the John Fahey tribute; Eureka the ode to the lost days of grand Bacharachian orchestration; Halfway to a Threeway a short but pleasant acoustic interlude; and now-- judging from the opening moments of Insignificance-- we'd reached Jim O'Rourke's rock n' roll phase.
The lyrics on Insignifigance initially seemed to be those of a man overestimating his own importance, even as the album title suggests otherwise. Pleas to the public to "get off my case" may work for Thom Yorke, but Jim O'Rourke, talented as he might be, hardly carries the kind of cache for distressed-woe-is-me-rockstar-anthems. Maybe labeling the package Insignificance is intended as a signifier that O'Rourke is in on this joke. Maybe the title is intended to suggest that we've been taking the music, the lyrics, and the bold statements a bit too seriously. But, self-aware or not, lyrics like these come across as more than a bit self-indulgent, which makes the music, at times, that much more difficult to embrace.
Which is a shame, because Insignificance sounds good. Sure, the arrangements are simpler and more rock-based than any of his previous efforts, bearing a resemblance to his production work with Smog, but not to any of his own material. Yet, again, O'Rourke proves himself to be an apt musical chameleon, every bit as adept at Elvis Costello-style rock songs as he is at more left-field arrangements. These may be pop songs, but they're hardly missing the signature O'Rourke touch-- they may start with over-amplified guitars, but they all give way to something else, be it harrowing steel-pedal and harmonica, or a long blast of feedback. And of course, a back-up band that includes Wilco's Jeff Tweedy on guitar and harmonica, Chicago Underground's Rob Mazurek on cornet and Ken Vandermark on saxophone doesn't hurt O'Rourke's cause any.
And so, the musical arrangements refusing to leave the confines of my brain, I got to thinking. Ever since the international shit hit the fan a few months back, I've been marching about telling all manner of people to try to understand your enemy's point of view before you label them as "enemy." So, rather than take the label "hypocrite," I stepped back. I gave Insignificance another shot. And another. And after a while I realized that it isn't the smirking, well-calculated affront to me and my hometown that I'd originally thought it to be. Lurking behind these spiteful lyrics is an uncharacteristically human portrait of a man caught between his obligations to one city and the seemingly infinite possibilities offered by another. For the first time in my life, I felt like I could relate to Jim O'Rourke.
In its second half, Insignificance mellows out, suggesting a return to the relaxed vibe of Halfway to a Threeway. On the slow, acoustic number "Good Times," O'Rourke sings, "I'd like to raise the Titanic here/ Take a walk/ Down its molded streets/ And feel right at home/ 'Cause the dead don't talk," and the listener is left completely in the dark as to whether "home" refers to New York or Chicago.
On "Therefore I Am," O'Rourke sings, "Me, I've traveled 'round the world/ I've seen so many things/ Why'm I talking to you?" His voice is as calm and collected as voices come, writing off the insult as a joke, but the music-- built around a simple but forceful repeated guitar riff-- betrays him, threatening to call him on his bluff at any moment.
Jim O'Rourke may not always be likable, but Insignificance makes him real. And ultimately, this is far more important. I may still be irked at O'Rourke, and I still feel the sting when I hear lines like, "It's quite a gamble to speak out of place/ Those things'll kill ya/ And so could your face/ These things I say might seem kinda cruel/ So here's something from my heart to you/ Looking at you/ Reminds me of looking at the sun/ And how the blind are so damned lucky." But now that's all beyond the point. Jim and I don't agree on much, but Insignificance is catchy enough-- and real enough-- to make me look beyond all that.
So maybe in the end, the title Insignificance doesn't refer to O'Rourke's lyrics or to his boasts and claims. Instead, maybe it refers to a fragile man trying to fool himself into believing that uprooting himself after decades in one place is just that: insignificant. The result is a shockingly insightful and resonant look at the workings of a musician generally more given to hiding behind absurdly twisted turns of musical phrase than letting us in on the inner-workings of his mind.
