Jim O_x001A_Rourke | Insignificance - CD

Personnel includes: Jim O'Rourke, Tim Barnes, Darin Gray, Glenn Kotche, Jeff Tweedy, Rob Mazurek, Ken Vandermark, Ken Champion.
Jim O'Rourke's second full-length solo album for Drag City has a similarly odd and vividly colored cartoon cover as 1999's EUREKA, but while it takes the pop experimentation of that album as a starting point, INSIGNIFICANCE goes considerably farther. This is Jim O'Rourke's most conventional indie rock album by some distance, with none of the 15-minute solo guitar instrumentals or noise experiments that colored his earlier albums.
Featuring vocals on every song for the first time in his career, O'Rourke makes a virtue of his somewhat thin voice in much the same way that James Mercer of the Shins does, by delivering his sometimes elliptical lyrics in an offhand, conversational tone that fits surprisingly well with the elaborate arrangements of songs such as the title track and "Get A Room." Where EUREKA sounded heavily influenced by Van Dyke Parks and the more baroque end of 1960s sunshine pop, INSIGNIFICANCE is a scrappier album, featuring more of the electric guitar assault that first made Jim O'Rourke's name.

• Genre: Rock
• Released: 2001-11-19
• Format: CD