Jackie-O Motherfucker – Flags of the Sacred Harp

As the site itself approaches twenty years, it’s coming into time that foundational pieces that brought RSTB into being are reaching that number as well. I’ve listed the ranks of free-folk and psych-folk as one of the biggest cornerstones of the site’s early impetus and this long-held classic from Jackie-O Motherfucker is up on the twenty-year block this year. Greenwood’s band had already been going strong for a number of years when The Magick Fire Music, hit Thurston’s then thriving, but still fringe Ecstatic Peace. A reissue in compilation with their ’99 album WOW! on ATP’s newly minted imprint would lead the groundwork for Flags of The Sacred Harp. It was the band’s most widely available release at the time, and one that marked a particularly fertile period. As the band’s Tom Greenwood notes, the record was born out of a time the band spent recording with members of Montreal’s post-rock circle; portions of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Set Fire to Flames. Somewhere out there, there remains a lost treasure from those sessions, but, this isn’t that story.

The key to Flags was its roots in the American traditionals. The record centered its material on a re-imagining of traditional hymns and anthems from the original American songbook that was first published in 1844. The band, which at the time included psych-folk notables Tara Jane O’Neil (Rodan, The Sonora Pine), Theo Angell (Hall of Fame), Honey Owens (Valet), and Lewi Longmire (Michael Hurley, TK & The Holy Know-Nothings), was always evolving but felt at a real creative peak on Flags. The record wanders between sweetly psychedelic notions of trad folk to the noisier passages indicative of some of JOMF’s most outre visions. The cacophony of “Spirits” spars with the sweetness of “Hey! Mr. Sky,” setting up the album’s second-half slide towards darkness. This 20h anniversary edition includes a wealth of additional material as well, including “Breaking,” an outtake from the sessions on Flags, and covers of Townes Van Zandt and Public Enemy. Several unreleased Brooklyn and London-based recordings round out the extras set. The record was banner release for experimental folk working its way towards the public consciousness in the early ‘00s, and Fire have given it a lovingly lavish new edition.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.