I'm gonna let all you indie kids in on a secret: There are at least three writers on the current Pitchfork roster that-- oh my god-- enjoy the music of the Grateful Dead. Personally, I go for Anthem of the Sun, while Rob Mitchum's favorite era is '77-'78, featuring the Godcheauxs. Heck, the Richardson household even owns that atrocious disco album the Dead made.
So we love us some freedom rock, man! While we can't quite get with either Rat Dog or The Dead (and only Mitchum would be so depraved as to trade Phish concerts), we've had to look for our vital instrumental noodling outlets elsewhere. Following a two-disc set recorded in Europe (ker-splat! goes the ice cream cone in your rainbow afro) none could be finer and weirder than the loose and sprawling collective of Oregon, New York, and DC weirdoes that by the nom de plume of Jackie-O Motherfucker. They've been jamming cross-country and swapping tapes of live shows through their U-Sound Archive for a few years now, and news of this two-disc reissue of vinyl-only releases from the turn of the twenty-first century had us filling balloons with hippie crack and suede-brushing Birks in anticipation.
Originally shoveled into duct-taped sleeves from the compounds of Thurston Moore and Byron Coley's esoteric Ecstatic Peace! label back in 1999, The Magick Fire Music coasts out on the slow, simmering waves of a Zildjian Cymbal Ocean, drifting for 15 minutes of bliss and never-ending nerve-melt on the opening "Extension". Ten players rotate in and out of the mix, the group mind honed in on the disengaged mantra-riff and a slow expansion out on the rolling toms. The piece evolves like some great barrier reef, beyond the usual group sounds that get clumped with Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Yet they don't really scrabble about like the shadowy black ids of New York's No-Neck Blues Band, either (who they always get lumped with, for being American and weird), instead moving as one before dying with the utmost group-grace.
"The Cage" and "Second Ave. 2AM" pluck a half-parched guitar twang from the desert dust of Ennio Morricone and utilize them to very different effect. The former stays with the dried hide of the riff, chewing at it and finally reaching a tremolo-ing state with scratched record gasps (or are they barks?) by the eleven-minute mark. The latter piece proceeds to beat the western guitar lick like a dead horse, driving it into the ground with free horn skronks that make lips crack. Underneath the lurching gait of a wandering horse clomps a trip-hop anomaly that lopes against the clattering battery of drummer Jessie Carrot.
As the double LP plays out, a comfortable pattern gets set. Simple textures, either from reverberating guitars or primitive electronics set the mood, and the remainder of the band buoys it as best they can, more content to keep the moment aloft than to necessarily move things forward. There's no need to go somewhere necessarily, so why not just enjoy the moment? For "Jugband 2000", an awkward drum-machine and disquieting reverb magnetizes the digital detritus of snipped voices and CPU bloops. Two minutes in, a swell of guitar and cloudy Gamelan clangs provide lift, but the background ranting remains, neither enunciated nor erased, and it keeps the piece from either enjoying sweet drift or making a concrete statement. "Quaker" similarly meanders like blown cone smoke in a dorm drum circle, the textures of thumb piano, jaw harp, toms, a gurgling rice-pot, and surf guitar froth slowly mingling with some spacy FX for a prolonged (albeit mild) buzz.
While plenty of other JOMF jams take anywhere from five-to-eight minutes to start cranking, Wow! (originally a UK release from 2000) starts off keyed-up. "Black Squirrels" gets built with pecan clacks and nutty vinyl scratching, promptly riding a nicked Appalachian lick up Himalayan heights. As opposed to waiting eight-to-ten minutes for peaks and plateaus, it gels better than horse hooves into a jubilant jamboree between the Owsley acid-spritzing guitars of Tom Greenwood and Jef Brown. Billy Crowley even frisbees brief thumps of a house record into the percussion dogpile for Bacchanalian good measure. The reduced group (for the most part a septet) whirls in glee, spinning a good nine minutes before plunking down into the kalimba-like opening of "Wow", which pokes percussion about into other folk forms. It never literally lives up to its name or the dizzying heights of its predecessor. Instead, it shivers and wheezes, two Dirty Threes taking a pack-a-day breather. Their shared vision gets beat-ific three-quarters in, though, gleaning light lavenders glimpsed at dusk before Sonic Youth's Bad Moon rises.
Closer "Love Horn" indulges a bit too much in their love of newbie free jazz, the horns squawking out some sympathetic textures that verge on noxious. For over two hours, though, they bring the jams, and this reissued set will make any head most grateful.
