Out of My Hands review

Check out this great review of Christopher O'Riley's release "Out of My Hands" from Michele Yamamoto in UnderTheRadar magazine's Fall 2009 issue:

Christopher O’Riley has been a public figure in the fusion (or confusion) of classical and popular styles of music. An able pianist, O’Riley has peformed eclectic programs, placing the impressionism of Debussy against the experimental folk of Nick Drake. He’s already released two albums adapting the music of Radiohead and one each that tackled Elliot Smith and Drake. Now, with this latest release, Out of My Hands, O’Riley presents his own arrangements of popular pieces from Cocteau Twins, Nirvana, Radiohead, The Smiths, Portishead, R.E.M. and more.

The first single off the album, a rendition of Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box,” opens up faithfully enough. A quiet reproduction of the melody is about as overtly faithful as it gets, but O’Riley manages to retain the anxiety of the original. Both in dynamic song structure and in the harmonies that result from intricate layering of music ideas, “Heart-Shaped Box” is every bit as aggressive as the original. And with the final unresolved chord, O’Riley even allows the harmony to ring out for about 45 seconds, enabling the sound mass to eventually take on the timbre of feedback.

With Elliott Smith’s “New Disaster,” the piano emphasized the sparkle of Smith’s upper guitar lines and spins it all like a Debussy-an quasi-tonality. Radiohead’s “All I Need” displaces lines from the bass-heavy song across the keyboard, creating an entirely different space with virtually the same notes. Of course, he never forsakes the harmonic or melodic structures.

In his adaptations, culled from the originals and onto a single instrument, O’Riley utilizes scores of techniques to produce original interpretations without sacrificing the core of the original songs.