Bill Orcutt / HOW TO RESCUE THINGS

This latest opus from San Francisco avant-guitar visionary Bill Orcutt is a charming and improbable outlier in his strange and wonderful discography, as it feels like a remarkably sincere homage to easy listening, the golden age of Hollywood, and schmaltz in general. As Tom Carter observes in the album’s description, the pervasive orchestral sweetening of the mid-20th century is far from beloved to most contemporary ears (particularly among jazz fans), but the title’s provocative Ornette Coleman-style statement of intent is largely an irony-free one, as Orcutt gamely improvises along with a shifting fantasia of angelic choirs, rippling harps, and swooning string swells. While all of the usual hallmarks of Orcutt’s distinctive playing (scrabbling flurries of notes, cathartic bends, viscerally abused strings) are present and remain as delightful as ever, most of the melodic heavy lifting is done by the looped samples. Freed from the burden of carrying the central melody with his guitar, Orcutt’s playing feels uniquely loose, tender, and spacious, resulting in an unexpectedly heartwarming and endearingly soulful major key blues album that is every bit as strong as the more explosive and idiosyncratic work that he is usually known for.