Jackie-O-Motherfucker’ Flags Of The Sacred Harp is a welcoming album; you’re drawn into it’s mesmerising soundscapes like a tired bushwalker stares at a campfire. Nice One, the album’ opener, begins as a dreamy folk ballad, before evolving into a improvised free-for-all that is defined by restraint and a psychedelic spirit, an acoustic cousin of Matmos’ YTTE from The Civil War. Country tones and an easy steel-string pace put Rockaway and Hey Mr Sky into Neil Young’ orbit. They unfold deceptively simply, and are beautifully recorded in a naturalistic, warts-and-all way that leaves a place for the room and the people in it. But hell, this is no Harvest. There are some wild and crazy moments captured here too, quarter hour jams that exude texture and passion, build then collapse in a tuckered-out heap. At times it’s a drifty campfire strum, at others it’s a tumbling space rock jam. There is a refreshing experimental edge to the tracks on Flags Of The Sacred Harp. It was (re)mixed by LFO’ Mark Bell, and his touches are subtle and important. The solos in Hey Mr Sky, the epic soundscaping of Spirits and the breakdown of Nice One, are all indications that this is a band just as interested in the use of space and recording/mixing, as well as extending the parameters of the listening experience and the limitations of genre. Most songs feature a twin vocal attack, male and female, sung in unison, and the feel of the album is organic and open spaced, more a Southern rural texture than any big city vibe. This Portland, Oregon trio plays real well together, relaxed and disciplined, and here they’ve been captured like a nature documentary – in the raw, in their natural elements.
Dan Joyce
