ong a purveyor of the type of off-kilter Americana that has recently received so much attention, Jackie-O Motherfucker’s long-form improvisations have consistently yielded sinister results: a refusal to submit to traditional songcraft, as well as a strong penchant for drone, has yielded results ranging from scarred country to striking, minimal jazz. When the collective has tackled a vocal piece—see Fig. 5’s reworking of the old prison camp chant “Go Down, Old Hannah,” for example—they’ve done so with the type of rustic, open-ended creativity that makes their heady jams simmer.

On Flags of the Sacred Harp, JOMF deliver an album that, while still not tune-oriented in the traditional sense, relies on songcraft to set the table for the band’s still-prevalent noise fetish. It is a perplexing move, to say the least: Five of Flags’ seven songs contain relatively uninterrupted vocal passages, and a sixth track features some disembodied chanting.

The decision to incorporate more traditional songwriting isn’t necessarily unexpected, especially given the level of talent and imagination JOMF has housed the last several years. The decision is strange, though, because while it undermines many of the band’s traditional strengths—true improvisation, free-jazz fuckery—it fails to change the dynamics of the band’s music in any substantial way. Flags’ songs still stretch into murky nether regions, their eclectic arrangements and love for sonic oddity still firmly intact. The songs on which JOMF base their compositions are expectedly inspired, tethered together only by their loose, unmelodic readings and the worldly, earthen passages that follow them.

The negative connotation attached to “unmelodic” above was intentional: While JOMF have attempted a large amount of song-based material here, they have by no means acquired a traditional “singer.” The vocals are instead handled by longtime collaborator Honey Brown, group co-founder Tom Greenwood, and a spattering of other contributors. As such, all of the vocals contain a sepia sameness, distinguished from the band’s instruments only inasmuch as they emit recognizable syllables and phrases.

Extremely frustrating at first, the vocal restraint is less bothersome when actual melodies rise from the murk. The Navajo traditional “Nice One” is a subdued sing-along; “Good Morning Kaptain,” a JOMF original, is a morbid lament; “Rockaway” is a dewy blues hammock. Owens is the most effective vocalist, her smooth pipes carrying the lullabies of both “Rockaway” and “The Louder Roared the Sea.” But it is the coarse male vocal on “Good Morning Kaptain” (presumably Greenwood) that steals the show, intoning the line, “Jesus Christ I’m drown’ding” like a Mississippi hobo ready to submit to a lonely grave. The only real complaint is the band’s strange tendency to allow the vocals too much room to breath: JOMF’s normal clutter is too-often absent during the vocal passages, which float along on spare acoustic guitar accompaniment before making way for more robust arrangements.

Fans looking for traditional JOMF sound masochism should find plenty of that here, be it after the tune slides into the night—the warm analog glow that lays “Nice One” to bed—or on the “traditionally” jammy “Spirits,” a JOMF original that opens with nearly six minutes of digital pebbles and nervous cello before waking as a surly, full-bodied drone.

In the end, Flags of the Sacred Harp makes few departures from JOMF’s MO. It forcefully reasserts their desire to aggressively interpret traditional music. The songs structures are a red herring, seemingly sending the band in a new direction, only to find them firmly ensconced in the throes of experiment and improvisation. Flags, however, does find the band’s own songwriting improving drastically, and their want to showcase vocal melodies has clearly increased. JOMF compositions often develop very slowly, and movements in the group’s sonic makeup may follow a similar pattern. Hopefully, Flags is a subtle beginning for a chronically adrift batch of old souls.