Jorma

In his first solo-release since his 2001 debut on Secretly Canadian, Jorma Whittaker dishes up the most accomplished work of his career: a dark & menacing soul record simply titled "Jorma".   The notorious singer-songwriter of the lo-fi-psyche group Marmoset is now accompanied by Indianapolis threesome Heavy Hometown. Led by producer Corey Barnes, the mordant, avant-sinister persona of Jorma's previous work is here in the ascendancy, fleshed out by a diverse array of instrumentation. Fuzzed-out guitars of former incarnations remain, but they are joined here by clarinet licks, creepy organs, a horn section, and lonely piano riffs.   It is still possible to compare Whittaker's body of work to the output of other musicians--Velvet Underground, Atlas Sound, Swell Maps, Syd Barrett, Robert Pollard & Alexander Skip Spence have been cited in the past--but (as Pitchfork has noted) the "twisted amalgam of psychedelia, sexuality, and off-kilter melodicism remains undeniably unique."