Take a look at Pitchfork's last two Tara Jane O'Neil reviews and you'll see that they were both written in stormy weather: one during a snowshower, the other in the cold October rain. And, well, here I am under a deadline and the skies that haven't been clear in days and puddles are taking the streets hostage. If that's not a coincidence, I've got a hunch that the folks at Mr. Lady have gotten hold of some diabolical lesbian weather machine (maybe secondhand from Touch and Go, O'Neil's previous label) and pointed it right at me. Because (hear me out), as it's been said many times over, a little precipitation is the perfect complement to the particular sort of melancholy that O'Neil has been cultivating over the course of her solo career, and thus the most favorable climate for a positive review...

Paranoia, you say? This, too, is a state of mind that goes well with TJO TKO, which is something that couldn't necessarily be said about her previous work. While her melodies have always been tricky upper-register wingwalks and her productions dense, it's never been this oblique or claustrophobic before. You would think that, after her recent brush with improv on the Dan Littleton-assisted Music for a Meteor Shower, O'Neil would be plum out of opacity. Apparently, she's been saving up.

She's also, thank God, learned to put it to better use-- this isn't the train wreck that Meteor Shower turned out to be mainly because O'Neil chooses to use some of her formidable capacity for structuring the gloom. And the fact that she expands her already eclectic instrumental repertoire even further doesn't hurt, either. While her post-Rodan work has tended toward a sort of organic Appalachian gothic sound, O'Neil lets her mathematical side show again here, employing sharp synthesized percussion with no pretenses of humanity.

These drums hiss and slunk through the opener "Prick", slowly pulling you into the ice-cold guitar and vox arrangement. It's bracing but oddly incomplete, changing without ever really resolving, and the next few songs follow its lead. "Welcome Back" is a more conventional piano-based dirge, but its more interesting elements (the disconcerting heart-murmur drumbox beat and O'Neil's spidery guitar lines) refuse to dovetail completely with the rest of the song. The all-electronic "Juno" introduces a Boards of Canada-esque modal melodic pattern that begs for a beat; when that beat enters, however, it's in a different time signature. All of this is delicately creepy enough to entice continued listening but not so compelling that you won't be pissed off if O'Neil doesn't give you some resolution, and fast.

If the album's meant to be taken as a piece, then "I Saw 3" would be a perfect conclusion. This nearly seven-minute minuet's delicious melodic clarity clears away the fog without sacrificing sonic density; dissonances hover around the focal point of O'Neil's voice, intensifying and resolving in a palpable rhythm. Too bad it comes in the right smack in the middle of the album. The next song, "With Yours", has only one foot in the melody, and the stark "Bye Bye" retreats back behind the veil again, leaving us with two obtuse loop-fests at the end. You can sigh along to these on a rainy day, sure, but O'Neil rarely risks the directness that's needed to convey the feeling to anyone who's high and dry. There are albums that can make me feel like absolute crap on a sunny day; TJO TKO, despite its downer charms, isn't one of them.

-Brendan Reid, October 25th, 2002