Mini-Reviews

[LaurieBlue]

The Korea Herald

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2005/10/08/200510080016.asp

[Album Review] My Morning Jacket "Z" (ATO/RCA)
 
The Louisville band's fourth album is a mass of a million brilliant details, a shimmering mosaic with its feet in Americana mud and its head in the stars. The group has been hanging around the vital center of American indie rock for a few years now, particularly singer and songwriter Jim James, who collaborates with Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst and who represented the kids at last year's Gram Parsons tribute concerts.

There's still some of Parsons' "cosmic American music" ideal coursing through My Morning Jacket, but "Z" moves away from the more overt Band and "The Notorious Byrd Brothers" references, closer to a convergence of Who-like playfulness and drive with R.E.M. mystery.

With new members Carl Broemel and Bo Koster on guitar and keyboards, respectively, and with Englishman John Leckie co-producing with James, every sound on "Z" is bell-clear and perfectly placed.

[LaurieBlue]

Soulshine (Canada)

http://www.soulshine.ca/news/newsarticle.php?nid=2625


My Morning Jacket Release New Album, Tour North America
Published: 2005-10-07

Kentucky rockers My Morning Jacket are back with their fourth full-length record, the curiously named Z, and they're hitting the road to prove it. Theirs will be a six-week trek across the continent, half of which will feature Canadian songstress Kathleen Edwards as the opening act (though unfortunately she will not be appearing with the band in her home and native land).

The band, featuring original members singer/guitarist Jim James, bassist Two-Tone Tommy and drummer Patrick Hallahan along with new additions Bo Koster and Carl Broemel, recorded Z in the isolated environs of upstate New York with noted UK producer John Leckie (Stone Roses).

"We wanted to make a record that grooved and swung," says James in the band's bio, "but wasn't trying to imitate classic soul. We wanted to keep an aspect of what we'd always done, but also make something you could dance to or listen to while driving home. Hip-hop and soul music are unifying people right now. I wanted to incorporate that into our music; to make this really sad, mysterious kind of dance music, something that really got into your butt, but also really got into your head and made you think."

My Morning Jacket will be making people think while they dance and dance while they think throughout October and November, including two Canadian stops. Z is in stores this week.

MMJ Canadian tour dates:

October 19, Toronto, ON – The Guvernment
November 3, Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom (w/Saul Williams)

Writer: Neil McDonald

[EC]

I apologize on behalf of Canada for the use of the old picture.  It is amazing to me that the new lineup is mentioned, and yet the old picture is used.  Neil will NOT be partaking in any Canadian love dances for the next two weeks.

[LaurieBlue]

Beaver County Times

http://www.timesonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15356602&BRD=2305&PAG=461&dept_id=478564&rfi=6

I've used this comparison since 2003, but it still fits and bears repeating: Imagine mid-1970s era Neil Young, backed by a few of the Allman Brothers, improvising songs after spending an entire week listening to Radiohead.

That's the riveting effect of My Morning Jacket, the Kentucky rock band that follows up 2003's outstanding "It Still Moves" disc with a brilliant new CD, "Z."

Like Radiohead, there's freshness yet a faraway-ness, a wow-there's-something-extraordinary-going-on-here feeling to My Morning Jacket.

But while Radiohead singer Thom Yorke can seem paranoid and cynical, My Morning Jacket singer-lyricist Jim James offers a dreamier world view befitting his band's gently psychedelic, faintly country-folkish flavor of Southern rock.

If you crave adventurous but alluring new music, pick up "Z" now.

[LaurieBlue]

Maxim

http://www.maximonline.com/entertainment/reviews/review_music_10719.html

My Morning Jacket, Z
( ATO/RCA )
Release Date: October 4, 2005
4 Stars
      
Their influences lean toward classic rock (Neil Young, Stones, Allmans) and they look like the sort of barefoot heshers who hawk grilled cheese outside Phish shows, but make no mistake: My Morning Jacket are every hipster's favorite hippies. From behind a towering wall of reverb, these Kentucky longhairs do more barefoot grooving than boot stomping on their fourth album. They must've rocked their own socks off.

[EC]

They must've rocked their own socks off.

That is actually really funny despite it's wrongness.

Jesus.  Talk about using every stupid cliche for this band that you possibly could cram into such a small space.

My local paper better have a huge front page cover story and a three page review of Z on Thursday.  Just to make up for the lack of Z review that exists.  grr.

[LaurieBlue]

http://www.praguemonitor.com/past/121005.html

Not a review..but the Prague Daily Monitor is advertising the NPR concert on their site..

"My Morning Jacket and Kathleen Edwards, in concert [NPR]"

[LaurieBlue]

Buchtelite.com

http://www.buchtelite.com/2005/1013/arts_01.shtml

My Morning Jacket, Z
Release date: Out now
Why you should buy it: Southern rock hasn't sounded this good since before Lynyrd Skynyrd became a joke of itself. Singer Jim James has one of rock music's grandest voices that forces the listener on a sing-along through the hills of MMJ's Kentucky home.

(w/photo)

[LaurieBlue]

Billings Gazette

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2005/10/14/build/enjoybillings/32-cd-gd.inc

CD guide: My Morning Jacket opts for trippy over twangy on 'Z'
Chris Jorgensen
CD GUIDE

My Morning Jacket
"Z"
ATO

Seems like no one quite knows what to make of My Morning Jacket, especially them.

After two highly-praised but rarely bought albums, the band shook off its tight little cult following with 2003's major label, reverb-soaked Skynyrdfest "It Still Moves."

Now comes "Z" and yet another reinvention of the shaggy Louisville quintet.

Led by Jim James and his otherworldly falsetto, and produced by John Leckie of Pink Floyd and Radiohead fame, the band has turned down the twang and emerged as a trippy, ballad-heavy, band of God-seekers. "Religion should appeal to the hearts of the young," James sings in the giddy "Gideon."

And all this the band manages without surrendering any of its loose-limbed soul vibe.

"Wordless Chorus" opens the set with a slow drum and bass grove under James' crooning lines like "Forget about culture/ It's not what pays." "Beats for You" is more orchestral and gauzy. Then comes a hint of the Morning Jacket of old with the boogie piano rock of "Lay Low" and the ebullient "What a Wonderful Man." And "Anytime" is unapologetic pop with jangling guitars and James singing himself dizzy.

[Jaimoe]

Here's one from Canada's Chartattack ( a good online music site IMO ):


MY MORNING JACKET Z(RCA/Sony BMG)
Once an obscure alt.country band, My Morning Jacket's fourth effort is a nearly perfect classiv rock album. Although the music is less twangy and more melodic, it doesn't lose the band's traditional bluesy/folk style. Everything — including the album artwork — signals that My Morning Jacket have matured. From opening track "Wordless Chorus," Jim James' angelic falsetto continues to play a vial part in the band's atmospheric happy/sad ambiance that made It Still Moves an underrated classic. Not all songs rely on melancholy though. "Anytime" and "What A Wonderful Man" trades in the tears for blazing guitars and more crafted radio-friendly choruses. The closing "Dondante" is an eight-minute Jeff Buckley-esque ballad that builds from a whisper into a blazing rockout. Z deserves an A. Mike Armitage


http://www.chartattack.com/

[LaurieBlue]

ChartAttack is a great music site. I visit it quite often.

[thebigbang]

Not so mini, but great review:

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/global_user_elements/printpage.cfm?storyid=1016539

The Daily Utah Chronicle - A & E
Issue: 10/11/05

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Mapping out a new geography of sound: My Morning Jacket plays aural cartographer on the impeccable Z
By Eryn Green

My Morning Jacket

Z

ATO Records

Five out of five stars

If the whole rock 'n' roll thing doesn't pan out for the members of My Morning Jacket, natives of Louisville, Ky., they can always fall back on careers as aural cartographers.

However, if My Morning Jacket's newest release, Z, is any indicator, front man Jim James and Co. ought not to have any worry about their current day job faltering any time soon-this is one of the finest records released in the past five years.

Still, mapmaking (of sorts) is an option for My Morning Jacket. It's something that great rock 'n' roll artists have been doing for ages: Using music to explore uncharted, or previously unknown, territory, both literally and figuratively.

With The Beatles, you hear London and its surrounding industrial grit in even the softest songs (e.g., "Hey Jude's" desire for redemption is nothing if not reminiscent of the Fab Four's latent desire to escape and redeem in the face of a confining factory youth). With Lynyrd Skynyrd, every discordant note calls to mind the convoluted, proud and rebellious history of the South. Similarly, Bob Dylan-in his New York days-struck every guitar string with lovesick, subterranean Soho blues, revisiting his surroundings in his music time and time again.

As did the greats before them, My Morning Jacket, in Z, has a way of inventing a sound that is at once innovative and dynamic, but which also harkens back to its maker's past. In this way, My Morning Jacket shows how music can be a means of exploring geography-an exercise in the sonic naming of a place.

The band started as a neo-hippy bluegrass outfit, morphed into indie-prog jam conglomerate (complete with nine-minute songs) and has now, on Z, honed its skills and morphed into a kind of accessible, flickering Southern experimental group with real pop sensibilities.

For fans who have never been to Louisville, My Morning Jacket's new record acts as a roadmap to a state (and a state of mind), painting a striking picture of the band's roots by way of a mercurial, ever-changing landscape of stark industrial expanses and intimate moments of self-righteous glory.

Z maintains its internal logic by exploring all the formative nooks and crannies that made My Morning Jacket the band it has become. There are throwbacks to the band's previous incarnations (including the excellent '70s rock opus "Lay Low," a piece of harmonic mastery), and in this way, Z works as a compass for listeners keen enough to care about a locale, sound and band they may not have previously found compelling.

Z is the closest thing to a genre-busting, sensibility-hopping Radiohead-caliber record that America has had in years. The album leaps and bounds across boundaries of form and tone. On the album's opener, James' falsetto howl sounds like a mix of Thom York and vintage Michael Jackson, while on the album closer, "Dondante," he sounds like a whiskey-soaked bar rag and a pack of cigarettes.

As Z shifts, it leaves in its wake the rubble of all kinds of accepted standards in music. Z moves from synth-heavy opera on its early cuts to substantial, twangy Southern-fried pseudo-psych exploration on its latter.

The album's title, Z, works as an accurate indicator of the record's project: The last letter of the alphabet, 'Z' implies a long and storied lineage of predecessors, while at the same time pointing out that the album exists at the end of a chain in new, groundbreaking territory.

The record appeals to the storied narrative of performers who helped make My Morning Jacket the important musical outfit it is: There is some Skynyrd, some Neil Young and some Rolling Stones-particularly on blues-ier cuts, such as the album's penultimate track, "Knot Comes Loose," intermingled with a decidedly contemporary tone. Bands such as Radiohead and Bright Eyes have had a heavy influence on the experimental and ambitious nature of Z just as much as any classical musician has.

Particular innovation can be found on the album's opening song (and statement of purpose), "Wordless Chorus."

On the opening track James sings, "So much going on these days/ Forget about instinct, that's not what pays/ Pleasure up and down my smile/...Tell me spirit/ What's not been done?/ I'll rush out and do it/ Or are we doing it now."

Is My Morning Jacket doing it now? Absolutely.

e.green@chronicle.utah.edu

[LaurieBlue]

Reuters/Billboard

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051014/review_nm/review_music_albums_dc_1

ALBUM: ELIZABETHTOWN

With the curatorial efforts of director Cameron Crowe, the soundtrack to "Elizabethtown" kicks up a Southern rock feel for the romantic comedy set in Kentucky. Beyond tender contributions from Ryan Adams, Patty Griffin and Wheat, the album sports the Tom Petty oldie "It'll All Work Out" as well as the new "Square One." Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham turns in "Shut Us Down," a breathy and surprisingly modern effort, while My Morning Jacket (which also appears in the film as the fictional band Ruckus) donates the awesomely lackadaisical "Where to Begin." Elsewhere, Elton John's "My Father's Gun" underscores the father/son bond that fortifies the storyline. While the soundtrack loses gas by the end of its run, each song is a great success.

[LaurieBlue]

Philadelphia Inquirer/Akron Beacon Journal

http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/living/12909952.htm

My Morning Jacket plainly euphoric

Z
My Morning Jacket
ATO

As they refined and distilled their reverb-drenched brand of cosmic country ballads and dueling-guitar rock over the course of their first three albums, My Morning Jacket became the indie-rock band of choice for the jam band crowd and the jam band endorsed by indie rockers.

Z, the Louisville, Ky., quintet's fourth full-length album, will come as a surprise to both camps: it's a joyful set that ventures into slinky soul backbeats, densely layered vocal harmonies, and terse, immediately catchy melodies.

Like Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin and Wilco's Summerteeth, MMJ's Z is a pop record made on the band's own terms. Even at its most compact -- the 2:26 What A Wonderful Man, which rivals the Polyphonic Spree for giddy euphoria -- Z makes room for bursts of heavy guitars, and Jim James' soaring, echoing vocals link the warped blue-eyed soul of the aptly named Wordless Chorus to the spacey guitar jam of Dondante.

-- Steve Klinge

Philadelphia Inquirer

[wordawg]

Good review in Kerrang, which is where I first read about the band all those years ago.

Would love to contribute myself to the debate, but living in England we become so dependant on the charity of others.

Feel the angst.

wordawg

[LaurieBlue]

CMJ.com

 MY MORNING JACKET
Z

We're not in Kentucky anymore. On their fourth album, My Morning Jacket have largely abandoned their trademark reverb-heavy hickster sound for straightforward indie rock, and the results astound. Frontman Jim James leads his group into new, minimalist territory with the addition of keyboardist Bo Koster and guitarist Carl Broemel. Building tracks like "Into the Woods" slowly and thoughtfully, My Morning Jacket emerge as the love children of Neil Young and Steve Reich, placing epic guitar solos atop carefully layered bass and keyboard passages. While James's vocals remain awash in reverb, Z lets the singer play with more complex lyrical passages, trying his hand at lush, surf-rock harmonies in "Wordless Chorus." My Morning Jacket also visit the beach on Z's catchiest number, "Off the Record," a hook-laden pop song built around the theme from Hawaii 5-0's chirpy guitar solo. It's a group barn-burner that proves, years later, that a full band still stands behind James' reverb-driven vision.
-- MIKE GREENHAUS

[LaurieBlue]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,16373,1596547,00.html

How is he hearing a completely different Album than 99% of the other people who have reviewed this CD?  I don't get it.

My Morning Jacket, Z
3 stars (RCA)

David Peschek
Friday October 21, 2005

Guardian

Kentucky's My Morning Jacket specialise in a reverb-drenched Neil Youngish melancholia - intensely lovely, but essentially conservative. Z, however - well, most of it - presents a huge leap forward. Its opening trio of songs recalls both the Flaming Lips' fusion of Americana and electronics and also that point in the early 1990s when the sound of bands like Primal Scream and the Boo Radleys moved suddenly into Technicolor: amazing, unexpected, star-gazing music, full of wonder.
Unfortunately, four of the 10 tracks are deeply pedestrian, heartland rock, of which Off the Record is the nadir: a horrible, cod-reggae lurch that appropriates the opening six notes of the Hawaii 5-0 theme. Worse, presumably - like Charlotte Church - tired of having the voice of an angel, several songs find Jim James singing with the voice of a brickie. This from a man capable of the intoxicating, exquisitely riven falsetto on show in Dondante. Why bother being average?

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

[LaurieBlue]

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0544/051102_music_notable.php

My Morning Jacket

Hailing from Louisville, Kentucky, Jim James and co. served as music consultants to Cameron Crowe during the making of Elizabethtown, which they also cameo in playing—what else? Skynyrd. But they've practically become a new band on their just-out Z (ATO), shedding the trash-rock steez for a more laid-back rock vibe. Saul Williams opens. Showbox, 8 p.m. $18 adv./$20