3 out of 5

Label: Textile Records

Produced by: Jackie-O Motherfucker

Something happened within the ever-revolving cast of Jackie-O Motherfucker during the period proceeding and that produced 2018’s Bloom: the shifting ensemble ethic has pretty much been baked into the band from nearly its outset, and that has made for a shifting sound as well, but it seemed anchored to ringleader Tom Greenwood’s appreciation for non-music noise, and how that can / could be blended to traditional Americana. And that has expressed itself in more or less abstract ways, with the embracing of improv meaning we get a fair amount of tangents, but the group has smartly shuffled a lot of live material – less “produced” – onto their own U-Sound label. As additional players and vocalists have come and gone, the scales of chaos and musicality and accessibility continually adjust in JOMF, but landing on Fire Records in the late 00s seemed to steer things towards arguably more linear expressions. Still plenty of noise, and expectation-busting song structures, but a gentle march from quiet-to-loud that could find likeness with, say, Godspeed! and the like, whereas earlier iterations of the band were very much outsiders. However, I continued to hear JOMF as a group; a collection of inputs.

This sound somewhat narrowed, though, going into the late 2010s. While I don’t doubt that the writing processes maybe followed similar habits as before, Greenwood stepped in front of the oft-applied reverb to his voice, or it became a more central aspect of the songs. That is: they were songs, and not necessarily jams, with his monotone talk-sing just an extra instrument. Songs that continued to be 8+ minutes long, and collided into bursts of cymbal crashes and creaky feedback by their conclusions, but all the same – linearity, with identifiable structure.

Bloom seems to be the peak of that. Tolerance for Greenwood’s vocals – a kind of unmotivated drawl, that gets a little cringey when he tries to put emphasis into it, as on ‘The Strike’ – is a must for appreciating the album, as he’s undeniable leading the sway this time. We do get some instrumentals, but these feel more like interstitials for the vocal tracks. Meanwhile, the aforementioned “structure” can clash a bit with the group’s preferred method of taking their time to get where they’re going: songs will suggest a forthcoming moment of release, but then continue to dawdle. It’s… all a bit underwhelming at first, especially with a couple of songs (‘The Wreck,’ ‘Golden Bees’) repeating the same exact melody, and not to different conclusions necessarily, either.

But the outre nature of JOMF is still there in that sense, even if blanketed by a front of down-home normality: while I think Greenwood loses the narrative thread partway through the album, the more traditional aspects of the songs – and the way they subtly break from them – are perhaps self-reflective, with lyrics quite digging in to the philosophy of being two things at once: trying to accept the dualities of Everything and Nothing. It makes sense to promote the lyrics / singing for putting words to those concepts, though it is also limiting: in order to stick with Greenwood’s one-note voice, it feels like the music can’t stray too far. That said, the appearance of some legit riffs / beats (‘Radiating,’ ‘The Strike’) are very exciting in the hands of these seasoned players (or as guided by its seasoned leader), somewhat replacing the chaotic experimentations of yore with the satisfaction of riding said beats in a drone-like fashion, only to indirectly allow for the buildup of layers of percussion and guitars and so on to happen in the background, until you’re surrounded by a bunch of noise and didn’t even realize it.

As a first JOMF experience, maybe this is more grabbing. As my Nth one, it’s interesting, and worth digging in to, but admittedly a little less exciting than I’d want, with my bias for earlier-era JOMF in tow.