Several ways to approach this work, none of them completely satisfying. Comprised of a single track some 38 minutes long, all instruments played by O'Rourke, gorgeously produced, cleanly played, melodies galore. And yet.

It's clear early on that this is going to be a collage form, the initial soft guitar strums abruptly giving way to first one new melody then others, shifting back and forth, staying around just long enough for the listener to begin to relax into them. And that "relax" might be one of the problems. Overall there's a strong early 70s feel to "The Visitor", that period when some strains of rock began to succumb to country and Americana, to smooth jazz or fusion and that's the slice largely captured here. One hears referents to the Allman Brothers, to Van Dyke Parks, to Sneaky Pete Kleinow-era Zappa and, I imagine, countless more of which this listener is blissfully unaware. Perhaps most disquieting is a piano figure toward the end that almost sounds as though lifted from Eberhard Weber's proto-New Age ECM album, "The Colors of Chlo�".

And yet. It's also damned disarming. The tunes are virtually to a one at least enjoyably hummable if not downright pretty, beautifully arranged. It's like someone stacking several dozen 45s in a jukebox, playing them back to back, all of them consisting of the "best parts" of soft rock, country-rock or jazz rock B-sides. So we have lovely guitar trills followed by soulful piano, bluesy organ, skittering or anthemic drumming, more guitar, not so dissimilar in feel from previous O'Rourke offerings along this line but slightly, if you will, bland, softened. In fact, it's often only the slide show character of the piece, something that might normally be, in 2009, trite and tiresome, that saves "The Visitor" from blending, yawningly, into the wallpaper. One keeps on being drawn back, on the verge of snoozing until it's as if some says, "But listen to this!" and wakes you up with some admittedly delightful bon-bon for another couple of minutes. There's even a snatch or two where he stretches out into quasi-atonal dronage, but very briefly.

Ultimately you may find yourself, at the conclusion of the piece, feeling somewhat happy but strangely un-full, as though you'd just gorged on a king-sized box of Good 'n Plenty, with a knot of pink, white & black gooey sweetness resting, a little uncomfortably, between your ears. As with Tarantino, you're never quite convinced that O'Rourke really loves this material, more only that he's mastered it.