Jackie-O Motherfucker – Ballads of The Revolution

In a brilliant short essay in The Wire, Byron Coley delineated the boundaries (or lack of) of the New Weird America scene ”“ a term coined by David Keenan to describe that broad swathe of acts that had taken on John Fahey’s inbuilt experimental fervour and run with it, and in doing so had rediscovered and re-enlivened the haunted howl at the heart of the Old Weird America that had so entranced Greil Marcus in Invisible Republic. When Coley spoke of the common ground between jazz, noise, folk, psych, experimental, electronics and free rock he was of course describing the possibilities that the scene explored, but he might have been talking about Jackie-O Motherfucker”¦The Jackie-O Motherfucker remit has always been a broad, inclusive thing: to delve with both hands into the claggy mulch of the American musical unconscious, dredge up what resides within and throw it into the air and see what clamour results from the humming tensions between sound and air. Consequently, listening to them can be a very visual and at times sublime experience, as if the weight of all that stratified music were absently present in the fragments they capture on tape. And naturally, because of inclusivity of their sound, they can also be a maddening self-indulgent mess.All that said Ballads of the Revolution is probably their most coherent and song-based record to date. It still has that undercurrent of experimentation and the same sense of historical weight, but here it’s streamlined into (relatively) recognisable forms, which in its way is as subversive a move as they’ve pulled. Even the blissouts, when they come ”“ like at the end of ‘The Cryin’ Sea’ ”“ are understated and restrained. Perhaps it is due to a settled line up (the focus point of Tom Greenwood, plus Nick Bindeman, Danny Sasaki and Honey Owens; plus an assorted crew of scene luminaries such as Michael Duane and Lewi Longmire) or the mellowing of age (though god knows the live sets can still be violent and challenging) ”“ whatever the reason, Ballads”¦ is a lush and at times delicate piece of work.This is nowhere more apparent than on the opening track, ‘Nightingale’ - a traditional ballad reworked as a kind of post-rock lullaby built around some aching pedal steel from Lewi Longmire and Greenwood’s flanged guitar and odd fragile vocal. ‘Skylight’ ”“ a long-time Jackie-O live staple - follows a similar pattern but has a darker undertow of drones; Greenwood sounds more distant here too, deeper in the muck of the past. There’s an element of The Doors at their most opiated to ‘Skylight’, or some of Spacemen 3’s longer jams. Yet there’s always something else lurking with Jackie-O Motherfucker and it feels at a number of points, bizarre as it sounds, that ‘Skylight’ is going to mutate in ‘Sloop John B’. And while we’re at it, ‘The Dark Falcon’ featuring a knee trembling vocal from Honey Owens (intoning the liner notes from a Mamas and Papa’s album sleeve, no less), also seems to reseed ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, taking it apart and leaving a shell of treated guitars and sheet-metal skronk creaking in the breeze.‘A Cryin’ Sea’ is the album’s centrepiece and throbs with the same psych/spacerock vibe as ‘Skylight’ ”“ but you could argue that the track never quite delivers, that if anything, it suffers from the general sense of restraint that suffuses Ballads of the Revolution. The track is built around a bowel-deep bassline and swathes of spiralling guitar courtesy of Bindeman and special guest Michael Dustdevil, and whilst it has a propulsive psychedelic heart it shimmers towards a climax that never quite arrives. As the tumult gathers, you long for some of that free jazz squawk that fired up their early recordings.Ultimately, Ballads of the Revolution is a worthy addition to the Jackie-O Motherfucker canon ”“ a back catalogue impressive in its sweep and form. And while it does feel a little safe at times, in the context of their ever evolving sound and their continual reshaping of the musical traditions to which they are heirs, it’s another impressive foray into the sonic possibilities of forever. Where they go from here is anyone’s guess but you can rest assured it’ll be worth hearing. Rejoice, yea, in the New Weird America. 76%Jackie-O Motherfucker on MySpace