Bill Orcutt, Steve Shelley and Ethan Miller Share “Four-door Charger,” Second Single from Debut Collaboration

Orcutt Shelley Miller, photo by Rachel Lipsitz

In June, Bill Orcutt, Steve Shelley and Ethan Miller announced a collaborative venture as the avant-rock combo Orcutt Shelley Miller, with a self-titled record set to arrive on Sept. 5 via Silver Current Records. Today, the revered experimentalists behind Harry Pussy, Sonic Youth and Howlin Rain, respectively, have shared “Four-door Charger,” the second single from that forthcoming five-track collection. The trio’s latest advance offering is billed as the album’s centerpiece, and through the course of its nine-minute, free associative fugue state, all artists’ improvisational powers ring out loud and clear.

“Four-door Charger” is a hypnotic, fuzzed-out monolith that spirals from its kosmische foundation to intense head-rushes and serene exhales. Miller’s rough and rubbery basslines find moments of transcendence in repetition, stumbling out of motorik regimentation with quick, instinctive embellishments. Shelley sets deep, limber strides with heavy floor toms and seamlessly passes through double-time stuttering on open cymbals and snares. Orcutt leads the charge with outpourings from a blaring electric guitar, with a tone that’s at once jagged, frenetic, warm and lucid. 

Coupled with the searing psych-noise of the earlier single “A Star Is Born,” Orcutt Shelley Miller’s sonic palette is diverse, unstable and always captivating. Charalambides guitar innovator Tom Carter testifies to as much in a press release: “The landscape Orcutt Shelley Miller inhabits lies deep in the stoner American bedrock, fed by volcanic riffage and hypnotic phrasing with rhythmic nods to the SoCal ‘60s and atonal slash piled on a mid ‘80s SST punk-fusionoid substrate, ultimately blasting a ‘big rock statement’ that treads the line between good times and blown minds.”

Orcutt Shelley Miller is available to pre-order now. Listen to “Four-door Charger” below.