Jackie-O Motherfucker: Flags of the Sacred Harp

admin on Dec 21st 2005

There seem to be two sides to Jackie-O Motherfucker’s “Flags of the Sacred Harp”: there’s the serene, meditative folk, steeped in tradition…and then there’s the avant-garde, boundless explorations of atmospheric sound. Of course, Jackie-O Motherfucker are decades too late to be considered ground breaking in either field, but the difference between the two halves of their efforts is that the folkier side to things leaves you with a good taste in the mouth, wanting more…whereas the experimental element divides the album irreconcilably, rendering that taste a distant memory.

The cycle of the mantra-like “Nice One” start things off on a tranquil note, its calm-inducing waves making it easy to picture yourself lying on a beach with eyes shut as the sun rises. After it drifts into an extended run of static, droning interplay, “Rockaway” resumes matters with another slice of daydreaming acoustics, delivering some of my favourite lines from any album this year:

“I’m goin’ up to Heaven, gonna talk to the good Lord above / If I can’t get me no angel, send me back the one I love.
Tombstone is my pillow, graveyard’s gonna be my bed /
Blue sky is my blanket, pale moon’s gonna be my spread.”

This is as straightforward and simple as the quartet get, and arguably, their most effective…and that momentum, that warm, absorbing streak they seem to get rolling, is continued with the blissfully sedative “Hey Mr. Sky.” Combined, the crux of the opening three songs provide a brilliant, mouth watering invitation to float away on a slow burning album.

However, before its final notes have even completely faded out, an entirely different direction is undertaken, with the 11 minute long enigma “Spirits” proceeding to dismantle that climax by smashing it into smithereens.

Inspired and titled after an American songbook of traditional hymns and anthems from 1844, it’s doubtless that there is a deconstructive statement to be found here, but in music terms alone, Jackie-O Motherfucker leave the listener with quite a conundrum. A fragmented album stemming from two different entities, the potency it promises early on spills open and washes over whatever remains like the sour, rusty cello that picks at the bottom of “Loud and Mighty.” In the end, it will all boil down to how open you are to the lengthy and perhaps testing digestion process, but if you’re familiar with their oeuvre, you’ll know Jackie-O Motherfucker are not here to fit neatly into any system of comprehension.