rso creates a beguiling sound on their third release, a challenging mix of slippery violin, banjo and saxophone with a warm folksiness at its center. It’s an open-ended type of music without clear resolutions, more often floating by on pensive clouds with loose, elastic elements of jazz and a painterly sense of sound. In it, brush strokes of string, woodwind and creaky vocal are laid upon another creating a whole that can’t be easily reduced to any of its myriad components.

Since main guy (and ex-Rex bassist) Phil Spirito writes what he terms “song shells” and leaves plenty of room for his cohorts to turn these shells into finished songs, it’s up to the ever revolving line-up of Orso to define the bands’ sound to a large degree. On My Dreams Are Back and They Are Better Than Ever it results in the most focused album yet under this moniker. While previous releases had a touch of twisted avant-folk about them, this record smooths out the sound with stronger melodic ideas and benefits greatly from the sweet, wayward noodling of saxophonist Carlo Cennamo. Sadly, this version of Orso (#4) has already come and gone, though the current one (#35—just kidding, it’s only #6) sounds equally promising.

I like a record that buzzes around my head like a persistent housefly, returning even when it’s smacked at. Songs like “Loaded For Bear” did that, lazy violins and skeletal banjos loping along to a ghostly chorus. Or the mercurial “Blind Date” which begins and ends with gentle, oddly-timed phrases and features choruses of watery vocals and percussion depicting an unsure emotional environment that sounds like an accurate reflection of a shifting, fickle mood. The dirt simple songs underpinning many of these fertile arrangements add to the appeal, nonsense-free ditties brought to life by the best sort of nonsense—hopelessly individual musicians untethered from any crass, corrupting concerns and letting their imaginations run free.

I also like a record that echoes the jazz/folk inclinations of the Canterbury progressive-rock scene of the late Sixties and early Seventies. That may not be Spirito’s intentions, conjuring forgotten favorites like Art Bears (their less severe stuff anyway) or Audience, but Orso gets the credit anyway; not too many indie-rockers have elicited thoughts of those hallowed names recently. Actually a more apt comparison would be to Robert Wyatt, whose embrace of loose, playful improvisation and pastoral melodicism jibe well with Orso’s, though both posses too much individuality to ever be confused.

The inherent instability of Orso’s lineup won’t derail any future efforts, hopefully. The pleasure of putting on a record without knowing what you’re about to hear, and then hearing something you wouldn’t have expected anyway is a rare treat, and one Phil Spirito and his many incarnations of Orso seem eager to deliver.