JACKIE-O MOTHERFUCKER - Bloom

After fifteen years dotted with releases of varying relevance, live albums, collaborations and whatever else, over the past decade activity under the name Jackie-O Motherfucker has been drastically scaled back, to the point of suggesting the project's end was imminent. Seven years on from their last (actually disappointing) proper album, with only a handful of ultra-limited releases filling the gap, the time has finally come for a real restart for the caravan led by Tom Greenwood and Michael Whittaker, chief architects of one of the most fascinating and multifaceted experiences to come out of New Weird America.

It hardly matters that virtually no trace of that once-thriving scene remains today. With a new handful of musicians and performers helping bring their vision to life, the pair try, with "Bloom", to revive one of the most incandescent imaginaries in American song, across six tracks of folk psychedelia with a rustic touch and plenty of improvisational flourishes, which take us back a few years while still offering a few timely updates. Gentle and unusually restrained (considering the project's far wilder dynamics), and all the richer for it in quiet subtleties that keep the record from feeling like mere recycling, this latest effort dusts off, more than respectably, a name many had written off, one still capable of landing the odd solid blow. The bloom has certainly been a satisfying one this year.

Leaning on the rural ease the record exudes, a fitting reflection of the environment in which it was made (an area of open countryside in Northern California), the tracks play with expansive atmospheres, borrow ambient qualities, know how to take their time and evolve with due naturalness, combining compositional variety and "immediacy" with simplicity. The result is a work that knows how to bring out nuance, that isn't afraid to work in fine detail, even where the sonic impact is far more massive and substantial.

With a recording setup that favors greater sonic clarity, the collective's seductive rural tableau unfolds track by track, drawing on the entire aesthetic repertoire of Jackie-O Motherfucker with sufficient fluency of touch. Greenwood and Whitaker steer the convoy first through the becalmed psychedelic improvisations of "The Pill", through which they delve into the most evocative, ambient side of a rootsy sound that never tips over into excess (note the flute contributions). It's a tendency toward understatement, working on the edges, on small emotional shifts, that the two bandleaders know how to make the most of at every turn, bringing out a melodic sensibility that's often entirely overlooked, revealing a rock sensibility that's anything but negligible.

From this standpoint, the more agitated moments, the ones that most recall the weird glories of the past, have undergone significant shake-ups, thanks to compositional qualities that tame the wildest aspects of the music while preserving its identity. The folk harmonies of "Radiating" thus manage to combine the experimental caliber of Charalambides or Pelt, channeling it into a melodic vein that draws as much from the new psychedelia of Mercury Rev and Mark Kramer as from the slow(core) singer-songwriter fare of that same decade and from 60s raga-rock, in a sinuous stylistic balancing act.

If "The Wreck" aims for greater electricity, beefing up the percussion section and recalling the frenzied escapades of the early 2000s (with greater expressive elasticity in the vocal department), "The Strike" deploys a similar rhythmic euphoria while adapting it to a context that weaves together country-blues echoes with eclectic jazz harmonies, in a complex formal synthesis. All without ever sacrificing the delicate touch of the compositions, a stunned, absorbed atmosphere capable of carrying the group's comeback almost single-handedly.

The glories of a "Fig. 5" or a "Liberation" are understandably a distant memory, but Greenwood and Whitaker clearly have no interest in indulging nostalgia. Letting a new reflectiveness serve as their guiding light (as the piano, effects and field-recordings framing of "Wild Geese" suggests), with a complexity that also rediscovers a willingness to engage with song-form dynamics, the course charted by "Bloom" already hints at fruits yet to come. Let's hope they ripen well.

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29/05/2018