OCregister reviews Southern Rock & MMJ

[thebigbang]

Kicking up Southern rock
  
MULTIMEDIA  
Listen to samples of music reviewed here  

By BEN WENER
The Orange County Register
http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=55785&section=SHOW&subsection=MUSIC&year=2003&month=9&day=7
The South rises again, Rancid remains the best punk band in action, the Dandy Warhols switch gears - and there are so many other great ones I had to lump 'em together. Which doesn't mean they're somehow inferior.

My Morning Jacket, "It Still Moves" (ATO/RCA, in stores Tuesday), Kings of Leon, "Youth & Young Manhood" (RCA) and Drive-By Truckers, "Decoration Day" (New West) - Say howdy to the new breed of Southern rocker. Alt-country only insomuch as they know Uncle Tupelo songs, Southern merely by location and the occasional Allmans-y flavor in their jams, these three bands nonetheless represent a shift away from the region's hick perception and toward a sound as classic as it is fresh.

Alabama's Truckers deserve the lion's share of respect for raising the game. Last year's unflinchingly honest "Southern Rock Opera" not only reconnected listeners (who heard it) to a ragged, twangy, swampy style they largely had forsaken since the '70s, but it did much to reconcile two sides of Southern disposition - aware of the rest of the world and progress yet shamelessly embracing good- ol'-boy rebelliousness.

The less ambitious but equally rewarding "Decoration Day" picks up where "Opera" left off, expanding the Truckers' appeal with a series of rich and reckless vignettes about incestuous criminals, "Heathens" stuck in a "Sink Hole" - all manner of misfits, really. That they also rock as potently as prime Skynyrd without seeming like mimics is crucial, but secondary.

But with Kentucky's My Morning Jacket and Tennessee's Kings of Leon, the focus is musical, the lyrics taking a back seat to songs that either shimmer like spaced-out Neil Young or kick with wild abandon - or sometimes both.

The minimalist Kings come across like a shaggier Strokes, its thickest riffs and swells of noise never overpowering lean grooves, atop which Caleb Followill's Southern-fried Dylan drawl takes on barking emphasis. MMJ achieves a similar effect, but through an abundance of effects; drowned in reverb, garage-rock, languid soul and Memphis horns, the sound - akin to groups like Grandaddy and Lambchop, only far livelier - is an ideal compliment to frontman Jim James' oblique imagery and Kermit the Frog mewlings.

More than anything, all three bands - well, maybe not the Kings - are oblivious to hipness. They make this music because they must, not because it's cool. And then it becomes cool. Some of the best music of the year. (The Kings play Sept. 24 at the Troubadour, MMJ plays Oct. 11-12 at the Roxy.) All: A