Jun 09 2008
My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
My Morning Jacket
Evil Urges
ATO; 2008
Honestly, given what I’ve read in interviews and other long-form pieces about My Morning Jacket, I get the feeling that Jim James really doesn’t read reviews very often. If he does read them, he probably isn’t paying much attention to them. It’s not that he’s pulling out some sort of snobby, snotty rock star card and disdaining the music critics who don’t “get” what the music he’s making. And I don’t think that he’s attempting to be the blithe artist – “I exist in my own little world and, since the sounds I create make me happy here, I don’t really worry about what people say about me.” I would like to imagine that it’s a bit of both, but minus any obnoxious overtones. James and his bandmates simply like what they’re doing because, after nearly a decade of propagating some of the most accessible (read: substantive and pop-styled) jam-band music on the planet, they have reserved the right to do whatever they’d like in the studio.
But does that mean we have to accept unthinkingly and with tin ears everything that a highly favored and preferred band emits from their instruments? Not really. Not at all actually. Listeners and critics alike exist to serve as benchmarks for a group’s music: if the fans don’t “get” it, the average folk certainly won’t. Just because a band feels obligated to perpetually transform their sound in order to stay ahead of some mythical musical curve doesn’t mean that we’re all going to pack up our headphones and follow along behind blindly and deafly.
This is what has happened on My Morning Jacket’s Evil Urges, the newest release from the critically acclaimed and hipster-celebrated Southern jam band. Continue reading “My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges“
