n 2000’s Fig. 5 , Jackie-O Motherfucker emerged from their looped electronics and scratch-and-scrape improv beginnings to produce one of the most breathtaking junk-histories of American music in recent memory. The band collected the musical silt from beneath the glacial whitewash of popular culture and molded it into the dark, cohesive narrative of a country populated by the ghostlike voices rising from cracked 78s. Reassembling a long-forgotten folk voice from its splintered fragments in hippie out-rock, rattling blues, free jazz, surf, improv noise, and American minimalism, multi-instrumentalists Tom Greenwood and Jef Brown and a revolving cast of loyal disciples found a music that stood the ghosts of the past next to the electric hum of the present. Restless and almost ruthlessly urgent, Fig. 5 teemed with the unstable energy of a new-formed nation, shifting on a rich current of exploration and gut-instinct primitivism.


If Fig. 5 detailed the formation of this secret nation, then Liberation is the celebration of its pluralism. Liberation rings with the noise of expansion and entropy, with the heterophony of each individual voice seeking its new home in a strange land. The nervous, primordial mire has cooled to leave behind a seemingly endless sprawl, a wide-open wilderness that Jackie-O Motherfucker probes with an uncommon patience and delicacy. It’s the sound of settling – not the settling of complacency, but the pioneering of new ground and the gradual individuation of every unique inhabitant. Whereas its predecessor wound the threads of Americana into a tangled ball of insistent noises, Liberation patiently unfurls its material into a loose and flowing tapestry of gentle swirls and flowing washes of sound. True to its title, the album unfolds with the shimmering ease of a true and unfettered freedom.


The slow-simmering tension and gentle clamor of “Peace on Earth” offers the first exploration of Jackie-O Motherfucker’s new expanse. Flickers of glistening vibraphone rise from a murk of steadily rolling drums and clanging guitar while a violin saws microtonal laments in the distance. Almost imperceptibly, a chorus of instruments rises from the dark – loping bass glissandos, unidentifiable hums, tremolo strum guitars, and a rise of cymbal washes flesh out the gaps between the vibraphone’s increasingly assertive strains. A sudden swell in sound marks a creeping sweep in the music, with guitars trembling brilliantly over the undulating pulse of tom-tom rolls. No linear climax ever emerges; instead, the sound simply swells out to the very corners of the soundfield. “Peace on Earth” languidly unwinds into the drum machine march of “Ray-O-Graph.” A steady electronic pulse guides a smoothly bending guitar figure throughout the track and evokes images of lonesome western highways and the deliberate drive for the Pacific coast. This pulse is alternately assisted and assailed by the interjections of violins, reeds, and electronics until it is drowned in a final flood of guitar squall – the aural equivalent of a sunburst on the desert or the elation of reaching the western frontier.


The twenty-minute epic “In Between” charts a similar course with even more tender patience as it unfolds from aching minimalism to a brink-of-chaos stomp. Brittle guitar figures paw at the air before congealing into frustrated progressions, as if gathering their strength for some undisclosed battle. A patter of echo-laden drum machine thump, a clatter of agile free-jazz drumming, or the cheers of squawking reeds greet each increasingly confident gesture. After ten minutes, the separate camps merge into a drunken stumble before exploding into a frenzy of backwoods noise borne of ecstasy and catharsis – a skyrocket of celebration from the opening passage’s darkness. A euphonious strut follows before a cymbal crash sends the instruments skitter to back to into the night. The success of “In Between” owes much to the strongly contrasting works that frame its slow-burning weight. “Northern Line” couches delicately mumbled female vocals amongst chugging railroad percussion and back porch twang, while “Something on Your Mind” offers a solid country-pop tune surrounded by cycling fiddles. Strong in their own right, both tunes work best as bookends for the sparkling episodes of “In Between.”


The frozen-molasses pacing steering the toy piano and sampler psychedelia of “Tea Party” signals an elegiac turn taken by Liberation at its conclusion. “The Pigeon” fastens Tony Conrad’s violin drone to hesitant vibraphone and atmospheric percussion as it works up to a mournful funeral dirge in its final minutes. A slow dissolve into silence suggests the final stillness at the end of expansion, stillness confirmed by the desolate stretching of album closer “Pray.” Multiple guitars and vibes unwind a skeletal melody into nothingness while a lonesome organ drones sadly against the silence. All that remains from the tide of expansion is the coldness of space and the loneliness of distance.


On Liberation Jackie-O Motherfucker refines the primeval squall from Fig. 5 into a uniquely sophisticated and spacious document of exploration. Though the shock and excitement of their CD debut may overshadow the delicacy of this effort, Liberation offers the band’s vision in a manner as heartfelt and delicate as would befit their shadowy ghost-nation. Amidst the languid pace and within yawning span, the spirits corralled by Jackie-O Motherfucker find their rest in the exquisite sounds of Liberation’s bold new frontier.