We Have Dozens of Titles Gastr del Sol

Album review

Producer-musician Jim O'Rourke can be a harsh critic of his own work, let alone that of others. So when, in 2018, he praised his 1990s recordings with experimental outfit Gastr Del Sol, O'Rourke was quick to stress that he wasn't trying to sound arrogant. "I don't listen to stuff I've worked on, but I think what we did was better than people thought it was at the time," he told Stereogum in 2018. He added later, with a laugh, "This is gonna sound weird, but we were fucking great." More than a quarter century after the David Grubbs-founded group disbanded, Gastr Del Sol's We Have Dozens of Titles, a new collection of extant recordings and live performances, more than backs up O'Rourke's cussed co-sign. We Have Dozens of Titles is a patient set of extended pieces featuring Grubbs' acoustic and electric guitar work and O'Rourke's textured accents, noisy layers and free-floating sense of space—an approach he'd continue a few years later when producing Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Other Gastr Del Sol "members" included original Bastro bandmates John McIntire and Bundy K. Brown—who went on to co-found Tortoise—and kindred Chicagoans Jeb Bishop, Thymme Jones and Sue Wolf. As documented on We Have Dozens of Titles, O'Rourke and Grubbs formed an artistic Gastr alliance that pushed the group in a sublimely inventive direction, one informed by their mutual admiration for kindred iconoclasts including Tony Conrad, John Fahey and Terry Riley. "The Japanese Room At La Pagode," in fact, originally came out on lauded label Table of the Elements as a split single with Conrad. The most minimal, and shortest, of the pieces on We Have Dozens of Titles, "The Japanese Room …" is hardly the place to start, though. "The Bells of St. Mary's" is a better introduction. Powered by minimalist piano chords and notes, a layer of bells that seem to hiss, and the occasional menacing bass-tone, its 4 minutes glide in, hover, drop washes of melodic beauty and glide out. "The Harp Factory on Lake Street," which also came out on Table of the Elements, is a 17-minute work that rolls through a loud-silent-LOUDER cycle that will scare your closest neighbors, a sound equally surprising given its sources: muted horns and woodwinds. At more than 18 minutes, "Onion Orange" will test the focus of less attentive listeners, but those willing to schedule space in their psyches for the patient unfurling of something, to borrow O'Rourke's words, "fucking great," will return to further get lost in its labyrinth. © Randall Roberts/Qobuz