the review everyone's been waiting for

[igor]

pitchfork media review of it still moves:

http://pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/m/my-morning-jacket/it-still-moves.shtml

My Morning Jacket
It Still Moves
[ATO/BMG; 2003]
Rating: 8.3
It's that moment every indie kid irrationally fears: your favorite band gets the call-up to the majors. I can't believe how many people I still hear referring to this as "selling out." Years ago, I might have agreed, but in making the move to one of the Big Five (or Big Four, as the case may soon be-- Warner and BMG announced a potential merger today), most bands actually make less money. These days, it's the ultimate sacrifice: putting yourself deeply into debt and into a rigorous touring/promotion cycle for the shot at making a serious statement backed by a real budget. Granted, the very faint possibility of commercial success exists, however slight, but for the most part, it's just a natural extension of their careers, and a practical way to build on the audience they've cultivated releasing records on tiny labels with limited distribution. While I don't think I could personally condone it-- they're putting everything on the line, after all-- I don't know that it's as condemnable as it was in the 1990s, when bands were doing it exclusively for a shot at the mainstream.

After coming to prominence with California-based indie Darla Records, My Morning Jacket have entered the BMG fold on Dave Matthews' ATO imprint, but you won't know the difference-- Jim James' high, lonesome croon is still recorded in a grain silo, and the band's sound is still a cathedral of reverb. Rest assured, the faithful will have no problem kneeling here. The Kentucky quintet gets about 30 comparisons a day to The Flaming Lips (mostly because of James' falsetto), but they're much more logically the successors, a few years late, to the legacy of The Band. All the elements are there: the rural wistfulness, the stately arrangements, the enigmatic vocals, the character added by the lack of note-for-note precision, the fact that you'd be hard-pressed to definitively label exactly what it is they do.

Last year's exploratory Chocolate & Ice EP left quite a few open questions about the band's future direction, many signals of which could be found in the 24-minute electro-funk centerpiece "Cobra", but It Still Moves almost immediately affirms that the spacy Southern psych they built their name on remains their bread and butter. "Mahgeetah" is full of the long, drawn-out vocals that last year made "Can You See the Hard Helmet on My Head?" such an affecting and seemingly meaningful question, and it also carries over the texture of that song, building a small epic out of the same elements. The band reacts to each verse differently-- once with explosions of glimmering arpeggios, later with Johnny Quaid's brilliantly understated guitar solo-- before bringing the whole thing to one of those thunderous conclusions that makes classic rock live albums such a guilty pleasure.

"Golden" trots through a glowing haze of reverb on Patrick Hallahan's steadily brushed beat, its lilting finger-picking and ghostly harmonies falling somewhere between The Band's stately Canadicana and The Byrds' "Ballad of Easy Rider". "One Big Holiday" doesn't look like much from the lyrics in the liners, but when James grabs hold of the opening line, "Wakin' up feeling good and limber," and draws it out in his singular way, it feels about a million times more weighty than it actually is.

The reverb at the album's midpoint reaches such titanic proportions that James' drifting vocals rival Sigur Rós' Jon Thor Birgisson for shear ethereality on "I Will Sing You Songs". It's like listening to a song while in the throes of a lucid dream. "Easy Morning Rebel" puts your feet back on the ground with its swinging arrangement and Memphis horns (actually played by veteran Stax session men-- a frill made available by major label dollars). The band leaves James alone in his silo to close the album with the searching, desperate "One in the Same", a song that finds him seemingly trying to sort fragmented memories into coherent thoughts. When he hits the lines, "It wasn't till I woke up/ That I could hold down a joke or a job or a dream/ But then all three are one in the same," it should put a lump in your throat.

And with that, It Still Moves strums to a close, an album by turns beautiful and possessed, by others raucous and fiery. If you're standing by the record racks trying to choose between this and the band's other major achievement, At Dawn, flip a coin-- either way you win. My Morning Jacket have made the move to the bigs in tremendous style, and as far as I can tell they haven't compromised a thing to be there. If there's one major flaw I could point to here, it'd be the album's length-- 74 minutes is a long runtime for any record, and as a result, the album is usually better off listened to in chunks, but it's a small concern considering the riches that await inside.

-Joe Tangari, September 18th, 2003

[peanut butter puddin surprise]

Arrrrgh, ye Pitchfork review has done a swell job...no walking the plank for the likes of him!!

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhh!!

[marktwain]

RIGHT ON!

I totally agree with the claim that they are successors to The Band.

BUT.  I do not agree that the album is too long. It seems too short to me.

[fakeplasticspivey]

yeah, the Band reference is something I have felt since I bought the album.  And I feel like its a very flattering reference because of what The Band was and what it did.

[Oz]

One of the best reviews to date. But about that 'too long'-thing, I'd say that is why "It still moves" is better than "At dawn", 'cuz with "At Dawn" I never could keep my attention for the entire 74 minutes, there were always moments when I would grab a magazine, but "It still moves" is over before you notice. At least, that's my humble opinion...