Eight years later... thoughts on Evil Urges

[EverythingChanges]

There's no such thing as a bad My Morning Jacket album.

I'm surprised Circuital isn't liked by some.

One Wing and One Sunday Morning are two of my favorite Wilco tunes. 

Without getting into it too much... I think on a fan board you have to keep in perspective that were comparing MMJ albums to MMJ albums. So circuital isn't bad, but it's "bad" compared to ISM and what not.

Wilco, on the other hand, has no bad albums even in the realm of only wilco albums.

Meh.  Except for a few tunes, I don't much care for SBS and S/T

I like SBS but The Whole Love didn't really grab me at all.  Agreed on Wilco (The Album) though.

I know this isn't the proper thread, but I think the first half AT LEAST of W(TA) is amazing. TWL is probably my least favorite wilco album, but there are quite a few top notch tunes on that album.





Anyways, I love EU. Its the only album that  I think I prefer the studio to the live recordings.

[ffghtrs]

Has it really been six years...jesus i remember giving that to a friend the day it came out at Borders where i worked.  fucking a.

[johnnYYac]

8-year anniversary bump...

[Murph]

8-year anniversary bump...

...and it still gets a bad wrap.  I love this record.  Cant believe it's been 8 years though!

[Nikkogino]

An album of good to great songs....not a great album though.  Whereas Z was a cohesive effort, EU was a little too bold.  It needed to be trimmed....all that fat is what b-sides are for.

[gcanini]

Evil Urges...it just messes with you. It's always been love/hate with me. Overall, I would take EU over Circuital. While there are filler tracks on EU, those fillers are nice to listen to. They aren't ugly-sounding songs. "Sec Walkin" and "Thank You Too" bring back summer memories for me.

And when EU goes out there, it's freakin great. "Evil Urges" "Touch Me Pt1/2" "SFS". Those songs are killer. It's a very jarring and contrasting album.

And how can you just crack up and jam to "Highly Suspicious"?

[KingCobra]

Every album brings good tunes, some are exceptional live. My Morning Jacket is a live band for me. I wish they played out more.


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[Lonndown27]

Evil...fucking...Urges.....well well well


JohnnyYac, I'd have to agree with most of your favorites off Evil Urges, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE, Thank You Too! Always have! This was the second album that was released, for me as a Jacket fan, the first being Z. Z hit me in the face and was quite rightly their Zeppelin IV, which makes EVIL URGES THEIR HOUSES OF THE HOLY.

There's so much eclecticism, much like HOTH, D'Yer Ma'ker = Highly Suspicious, No Quarter = Touch Me II, The Song Remains The Same = Evil Urges, Dancing Days = Remnants / Aluminum Park, The Rain Song = Smokin From Shootin......

there's so much color...the color ORANGE comes to my mind any time I think of EU, especially when, the first time I witnessed the Jacket live, the first thing they open with is Evil Urges.......absolute CHILLS....it reminded me of the first time I heard the live version, from March 2008 in Texas, on youtube, watching it over and over and over until the album was finally released.

This band is a marvel. 

I agree with others allegations that EVIL URGES IS A CONCEPT ALBUM....

it's true...it's like an urban surreality....I feel a lot of hope and aspirations and ambition for Obama to become president and change the Bush era around...there's a lot of personal politics going down, a lot of subtle things...the lyrics to LOOK AT YOU are pretty much verbatim from a campaign speech for Obama or something...it's such a call to arms....I remember that time...I had just graduated high school and was really hoping this country was going to change...and then the bailouts happened and all that ugly shit....

this album spoke to me throughout those times, as did the rest of their discography, but more importantly it gave me a kinda weird hope.

FAVORITES:
Smoking From Shootin
Touch Me II
Highly Suspishhhhh
Thank You Too!
Evil Urges
Aluminum Park (one of their most underrated tracks ever)

MEH:
Remnants (never really grabbed me, just seemed like a song they wrote because "shit this album is WAY TOO FUCKIN WEIRD...we need another balls to the wall rock song, but make it the most balls to the wall WE'VE EVER DONE so it silences complainers about the guitar rock being minimized"

Look At You (I go through phases...I either LOVE THIS SONG..or don't care for it, or think it's too schmaltz. I once made the connection between this song and Look At Me by John Lennon...it's almost like a hopeful, uplifting answer song to Lennon's more dreary, more vulnerable self-examination.

I'm Amazed (the most mainstream, poppy thing MMJ have ever done...i love the riffs at the end and the piano and guitar interlockings and of course, the solos...but...I don't really get going like nuts when this song comes on, although i did go bonkers BOTH TIMES it was played live to me)

Sec Walkin (this song should almost never be played live....the only part of it that works is the "Brother...Brother" harmonies...that's it...I give Jim total props for trying this experiment and having the balls to play it at a career defining show like Bonnaroo 2008)


ABSOLUTELY HATE:

Touch Me Pt 1 (its such an unconscionable song...I just hate it..none of it works...if they ever played this thing live at a show I witness, over something else that I haven't heard or frankly one that I even have heard, I'll be annoyed...i just hate it)

Librarian (this is mystifying to me how anyone could've gotten into this band off the "strength" of this song...it's such a weak song from Jim...it doesn't have any good lyrics, the chords are all very reverent and too self serious for a song like this...the strings???? my god...it's a horrorshow of bad decision making on Jim's part. Just my opinion. I'd follow Jim James and those boys to the gates of hell, but NOT if they're playing Librarian)

Two Halves (this is like Jim wanting to reproduce the prom night shows in a song or something...it's so strange...if they would've gone with some more humorous things with this song, it may  have worked and worked brilliantly, like Highly Suspicious...but no...its yet another song, like Librarian, that takes a subject that's not only bizarre, but utterly ridiculous and hilarious and turns it into this reverent ballad...bad move...but oh well, Its STILL a MMJ song..and that's better than 95% of the shit out there)


MMJ captured 2008 in this album....listen to the Waterfront show...there's such a buzz, such an atmosphere...that atmosphere, for me, DEFINES EVIL URGES... 

Love ya guys!!! 

[Brother Beck]

Some really amazing songs and some absolute crap songs that I can't even wrap my head around what the hell they were thinking.  First album by these guys with songs that I actually actively dislike.  Up until this album I enjoyed all of their songs to one degree or another, it was just a matter of how much.  For me, this is how it shakes out:

ALL TIME CLASSIC
Smokin From Shootin

GREAT SONGS
Evil Urges
Touch Me Pt. 1
I'm Amazed
Thank You Too!
Aluminum Park
Remnants
Touch Me Pt 2.

OKAY SONGS (BUT HONESTLY NOT UP TO PAR)
Librarian
Look At You

SONGS THAT ARE ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE IN MY OPINION EVEN THOUGH I HAVE SO MUCH RESPECT FOR THESE GUYS AS MUSICIANS AND AS PEOPLE THAT I FEEL HORRIBLE FOR SAYING IT
Highly Suspicious
Sec Walkin
Two Halves

I can see the appeal of Highly Suspicious and parts of it are really fun, but for me I just can't get past the weird canned background vocals.  I wish the guys in the band just sang the words themselves.  I tried for years to jam to this song because so many fans seem to really love it but I've just never been able to do it.  The weird voices make it seem to me like they didn't even take this song seriously.  Like a song can be fun but the people making it should still be trying at what they do. 

For a guy who has arguably one of the most amazing singing voices in the world, on Sec Walkin to me Jim sounds like Kermit The Frog being partially strangled and being recorded halfway down a hallway.  When added to the fact that it's just not that interesting of a song musically I just don't know what they were going for. 

Two Halves is just a horrible song. 

I've always wished that Jim took the songs that he brought to the Monsters of Folk album and instead recorded them with the band.  A song like Losin Yo Head would have been incredible done by MMJ and I feel like it really would have for pretty good on Evil Urges. 

[amskinz]

Brother Beck brings up the Kermit voice. Every time I hear someone say that I wish they could have got the green (it ain't easy) light to be the "backing" band for Dr. Teeth. The possibilities would have been endless. What I hoped for more than anything was a full scale tour where MMJ would play behind the curtain, and we would watch The Muppet band perform.

[LB]

Touch me part 1 is perfect.

[Lonndown27]

Some really amazing songs and some absolute crap songs that I can't even wrap my head around what the hell they were thinking.  First album by these guys with songs that I actually actively dislike.  Up until this album I enjoyed all of their songs to one degree or another, it was just a matter of how much.  For me, this is how it shakes out:

ALL TIME CLASSIC
Smokin From Shootin

GREAT SONGS
Evil Urges
Touch Me Pt. 1
I'm Amazed
Thank You Too!
Aluminum Park
Remnants
Touch Me Pt 2.

OKAY SONGS (BUT HONESTLY NOT UP TO PAR)
Librarian
Look At You

SONGS THAT ARE ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE IN MY OPINION EVEN THOUGH I HAVE SO MUCH RESPECT FOR THESE GUYS AS MUSICIANS AND AS PEOPLE THAT I FEEL HORRIBLE FOR SAYING IT
Highly Suspicious
Sec Walkin
Two Halves

I can see the appeal of Highly Suspicious and parts of it are really fun, but for me I just can't get past the weird canned background vocals.  I wish the guys in the band just sang the words themselves.  I tried for years to jam to this song because so many fans seem to really love it but I've just never been able to do it.  The weird voices make it seem to me like they didn't even take this song seriously.  Like a song can be fun but the people making it should still be trying at what they do. 

For a guy who has arguably one of the most amazing singing voices in the world, on Sec Walkin to me Jim sounds like Kermit The Frog being partially strangled and being recorded halfway down a hallway.  When added to the fact that it's just not that interesting of a song musically I just don't know what they were going for. 

Two Halves is just a horrible song. 

I've always wished that Jim took the songs that he brought to the Monsters of Folk album and instead recorded them with the band.  A song like Losin Yo Head would have been incredible done by MMJ and I feel like it really would have for pretty good on Evil Urges. 

I don't agree with everything you wrote, BUT "LOSIN YO HEAD" IS KILLER LIVE BY MMJ...listen to the 2010 recordings...fucking epic

[Shug]

I love I'm Amazed, but I like catchy pop songs with a good riff.  Not sure why, but it reminds of The Band.  The lyrics are a lot deeper than the music and I think they are a strongly worded message of the need for love and a relationship with God reflected in how one treats other people and the need for social justice and a rejection of superficial empty consumerism and entertainment intended to distract a society from things that really matter.

We fuckin' need to take to heart the message of I'm Amazed even more today than we did in 2008, I believe.  Fuckin' A.  I get what you are saying about what Evil Urges meant to you, Lonn, in the context of the politics and social movement of the times it was released in.


I'm amazed at a quiet ocean
I'm amazed at your warm devotion
I'm amazed at what the people sayin'
I'm amazed by a divided nation

Like the rhythm of the earth, I get disrupted

I'm amazed at all that has been
I'm amazed at all that will be
I'm amazed at the tv stations
I'm amazed what they want me to believe

After all is said and done- where is the justice?

I'm amazed, the lack of evolution
I'm amazed at the lack of faith
I'm amazed at the love we're rejecting
I'm amazed what we accept in its place

Like the rhythm of the earth
And the rhythm of the ages
Like the rhythm, I get disrupted

I'm amazed
I'm amazed
Ah
Ah

[Shug]

Yeah, I like the idea of this being a Jacket song

[SplatSplatSplat]

not a good album but it absolutely has some good/great songs

[Shug]

I realized what it is about I'm Amazed that reminds me of the band; the twangy repeating  rolling riff in I'm Amazed sounds like the twangy mouth harp in Up On Cripple Creek.

[excel]

Thank you for Remnants and the ending to Smokin from Shootin :)

[odelljaj]

I just watched this for the first time last night. It is hilarious and a good behind the scenes of the album.  I am sure it is on this forum somewhere and most have seen it.

My Morning Jacket 2038
https://youtu.be/JGdTwLjNYWk?list=LL4QSPkHkQ8uAJpq6S3Of6ng

[Angela D Vice]

I find there are times I love certain albums more than others.  MMJ and Wilco are two of my loves but some albums were immediate favorites while others came to me in time.  I think it depends on your perspective and where your head is when you first hear it.

Shug, I've always loved I'm Amazed but decided earlier this year I was tired of it...  And then I heard it live in the Ville and I was sucked right back into loving it.

[Murph]

10 Year anniversary bump...

https://www.stereogum.com/2000855/evil-urges-turns-10/franchises/the-anniversary/

Although I'm in the camp that loves EU (the author clearly does not) more than Circuital and The Waterfall, I thought this was a pretty good write up.