Cars pass, telephones ring, and the once and future legend Bill Orcutt redefines the meaning of “shred” four or five times in the course of the opening tack to the new CD-reissue of A New Way to Pay Old Debts, out on Editions Mego. (To be confused with the English Renaissance drama, maybe.)
The ex-member of Harry Pussy's schizoid interpretation of delta blues is the sound of alien lifeforms translating a hundred light years of slow-moving swamp ballads and sad-sack transactions with the devil into a frenetic four minute-sized vessel that's sea-worthy enough to make the long trip across a galaxy or two to the terrain from which it came at the very beginning.
