New session work here from Jackie O-Motherfucker, and it’s motherfucking great. With their consistently inconsistent output of some thirty-odd releases since their inception in 1995, the group’s experimental and freeform nature seems to extend past their music in to group membership, with some forty-odd ex-players that have Jackie O’Motherfucker some place on their music resume.
Founding member Tom Greenwood remains the ever consistent core of the group, once more finding Pome Pome Tones label boss Jeffrey Alexander as part of the five-piece line-up responsible for this session. As such it’s no surprise to find the music coming to us again on Pome Pome…rather the surprise is where it always is with any similar improvisational act; in the final recording created from the live chemistry of the group and the influences they bring.
It’s easy to expect great and new things from Jackie-O Motherfucker each time a release drops, and Smiles doesn’t disappoint. Each side is a twenty-plus minute track that gradually builds from sparse jazz to a proper psych-jam, that sounds much more than the sum of it’s part, aided greatly by multiple multi-instrumentalists in the lineup.
The A-side ‘La Cosa’ covers the most ground, starting off stark with lap steel guitar, chimes and woodwinds keeping things trundling along and calm. As the drums build things get a bit more paranoid and when the fuzz of the guitar and bass kicks in around the ten-minute mark we’re going head down in to a proper jazz session.
‘The Corner’ on the flip comes out the gate a bit faster, gaining momentum at a comfortably offbeat pace until it all goes melting pot and melts your face. If you only listen to a short-part of this release then make it the last ten or so minutes of this joint.
Limited edition of 100 cassettes ships out early next week, which you can pre-order from the Jeffrey Alexander bandcamp page here: https://jeffreyalexander.bandcamp.com/album/smiles