Pitchfork

The Sacred Harp is the title of an American songbook first published in 1844 that collected hundreds of traditional hymns and anthems dating back to Colonial times. Passed down by oral tradition, these polyphonic songs were meant to be sung a cappella by choirs, and were written using a unique four shape-note notation. This simplified manner of notation was created to encourage active participation, emphasizing an inclusive sense of community over performance. For their fifth album Flags of the Sacred Harp, the Portland-based collective Jackie-O Motherfucker use the lessons of The Sacred Harp and other traditional blues and gospel sources as a point of disembarkation. On these seven tracks, the group patiently unravel their source material's tangled threads, respooling them into wondrously evocative yet deeply personalized new devotionals.

Over the course of their now decade-plus career, J-OMF have often incorporated American folkloric material into their free-form experiments, most memorably on 2000's Fig. 5, which included reconfigured versions of the traditional hymns "Go Down, Old Hannah" and "Amazing Grace". On Flags of the Sacred Harp, however, the group has more fully internalized and distilled the grammar of its blues and gospel influences, so that throughout the album identifiable scraps of melody or lyrics continually surface then re-submerge into the music's bubbling depths. And though the album was over a year in the making, there is nothing labored in the group's delivery. Each of these extended, luminous pieces issues forth with an unhurried grace as though simply tapped from an already existent wellspring.

Throughout the group's lifespan, Jackie-O Motherfucker has undergone several personnel shifts, and is here pared to a quartet that includes founder Tom Greenwood, Nudge vocalist Honey Owens, and guitarist Adam Forkner, who has also played with Yume Bitsu and Devendra Banhart. But as with traditional Sacred Harp singing, the emphasis here is on group interplay and exploration rather than individual voices. Gentle opener "Nice One", though not a cappella, commences with Greenwood and Owens locked in a mesmeric vocal roundelay, before radiant amp feedback and cymbal swirls gradually permit the song's structure to loosen particle by particle. In contrast, the following "Rockaway" is as straightforward a country blues as the group have ever cut, with lyrics ("tombstone is my pillow/ graveyard's gonna be my bed") that allude to Blind Willie McTell's "Death Room Blues", among other folk blues classics. "Hey Mr. Sky" does the same for Charley Patton's "Pony Blues", although the words are carried heavenward by a full armload of rippling acid guitar.

Standing center is the 16-minute sculpted drone of "Spirits", a steadily ascendant instrumental excursion that contains the album's least overt traditional references, conducting its worship instead through cryptic ceremony and unmoored electricity. As the album progresses, however, the skies grow increasingly darker, with tracks like "Good Morning Kaptain" and "The Louder Roared The Sea" recasting the language of the hymnal to express a vague, encroaching dread rather than faith. Yet still the group's music-- a mass of splintered guitar, percussion, harmonica, and indistinct voices-- remains faithfully reliant on congregational unity, and as result Flags of the Sacred Harp stands as Jackie-O Motherfucker's most potent and focused liturgy to date.