Thursday, October 9, 2008

JOMF...the band with the unmentionable name

Being a middle aged football/skiing/track mom who writes about underground music is kind of a balancing act. As a writer, you're allowed -- almost required -- to swear and be cynical and allude to all kinds of contraband ideas. As a mom, you are supposed to behave yourself and not make too much embarrassing trouble. You are not allowed to have CDs on in the car with too much bad language. You should probably not have CD covers in places your kid's friends can see that have naked women on them or words like "motherfucker."

Ahem...today's review is of a really excellent band called Jackie O Motherfucker. (Some of you may know that my friend Michael has been playing with them lately and mastering their CDs and so forth, but he is not on this particular record.)
Sorry, Sean, I'll try to be more conventional next week.

Artist: Jackie O Motherfucker
Album: Freedomland
Label: Very Friendly
Review date: Oct. 9, 2008
Freedomland documents a series of live performances by the summer 2006 incarnation of Jackie O Motherfucker, an outfit centered around guitarist and turntablist Tom Greenwood, but with a rotating cast of supporting members. This version of JOMF is a particularly incendiary one, jettisoning the gentler folkier experiments of the Theo Angell/Samara Lubielski years, and focusing instead on a noisy, freely improvised clatter and storm.

The impetus for the shift is likely Inca Ore’s Eve Salens, who also sang with JOMF on 2006’s Valley of Fire. She is an extraordinarily volatile presence here, caterwauling and moaning and free-associating through a minefield of explosive sounds. Utterly unconstrained, she has a speaking-in-tongues quality that encourages everyone else in the band to greater levels of cacophony. Consider for instance, the relatively accessible opening track "Devotion" where she chants "You know devotion," over and over at escalating volumes. As she approaches catharsis, the drummer, Danny Sasaki, follows right along with her, his pounding coalescing into an almost continuous barrage. The guitars, too, erupt into jagged masses of discord, underlining the chaotic crescendo. The lyrics seem almost random. They are delivered in a flat sing-song with odd syllables emphasized. And yet, the excitement is palpable.

The whole review


The MySpace

5 comments:

Syd The Squid said...

i've forwarded this to Tom... Mxxx

jenniferpkelly said...

Just the Dusted link I hope? Not me whinging about the band name?

Syd The Squid said...

of course!

robp said...

When I mentioned to a friend that I knew someone playing with Jackie O and that they might be opening for Nick Cave, he said it was too bad that his friend who'd played with Jackie O had decided to focus on being a mom. So hey, Jen, it's one thing explaining to our kids what we're listening to, but at least we don't have to (get to?) answer the "What's the name of your band?" question. Not that my kids don't hear me swear plenty just being in the car with me - there's a lotta jackie o's on the road.

Syd The Squid said...

Nick Cave was only offering $250... so it didn't happen...