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http://badgerherald.com/artsetc/2005/10/26/my_morning_jacket_pl.php

My Morning Jacket playing Halloween concert at Annex
ATO Records

Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Halloween partiers are in for a special treat Friday night when part acid rock, part alt-country band, My Morning Jacket swings through Madison for a show at The Annex. The band is on tour to promote their most recent, and some say best, album, Z.

But who in the hell is My Morning Jacket? The band seems to revel in its mysteriousness, letting their music and artsy album covers do most of the talking. Even the majority of promotional photos feature band members' faces obscured in shadow. Whether intentional or not, this mysteriousness lends itself well to the epic, sometimes spooky, country rock-meets-Radiohead sound the band has cultivated in its six years together.

To take away this veil of mystery, one should first know that the band hails from the not-totally-southern, not-quite-northern metropolis of Louisville, Ky., an area the band calls a place of southern romanticism and northern progressivism.

My Morning Jacket's country influence comes from their roots in this town, and this influence alternates between the fragile, thoughtful, Neil Young realm of country and the crunchy, guitar-heavy Lynard Skynard-esque sound that more often typifies southern rock. Think After the Gold Rush plus "Freebird" and you're getting closer to the heart of My Morning Jacket.

The five-member band is composed of singer, guitarist and songwriter Jim James, bassist Two-Tone Tommy (yes, even their names are cooler than most people will ever be) and drummer Patrick Hallahan. When original members Johnny Quaid and Danny Cash decided they didn't want to spend so much time on the road, keyboardist Bo Koster and guitarist Carl Broemel took over. Koster and Broemel, who, fatefully, were the first people the band approached as replacements, joined MMJ just after the 2003 release of the album It Still Moves.

After three studio albums together, including 1999's The Tennessee Fire, 2001's At Dawn as well as It Still Moves, My Morning Jacket could have lost its signature sound after the departure of founding members Quaid and Cash. Luckily for MMJ fans, nothing has been lost on Z, a lush, reverb heavy acid trip that begins strongly with the "Wordless Chorus" and maintains its excellence throughout with tracks like "Lay Low" and "Anytime." If anything is a testament to the band's vast range of influences, this album is it.

The recording sessions for Z took My Morning Jacket from the converted farmhouse in the country outside of Louisville where they had cut their previous albums, to Allaire studios, situated high in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York. For the band, this change of scenery was a way to maintain the rural surroundings that proved highly inspirational in the past, while escaping the anger and frustration the band was experiencing in their hometown. In the Catskills, My Morning Jacket could let the Louisville soul music they had been so intent on creating flow. Eventually, the band came down from the mountains with Z.

Fans should expect MMJ to play heavily from this album on Friday, but what else can an audience anticipate from a band whose sound is so hard to pinpoint and whose influences are so wide-ranging? While Two-Tone Tommy has described the live My Morning Jacket experience as the band simply having fun and living out their 13-year-old fantasy of playing air guitar on their beds, critics give the band more credit, describing My Morning Jacket shows as an explosion of contemporary sound mixed with traces of rock and roll.

Imagine the attitudes, and the hair, of an early '70s Led Zeppelin with a Bonnaroo jam-band mentality. Add Thom Yorke's voice and a honky tonk hook and you have, more or less, a My Morning Jacket show.

My Morning Jacket fans who are willing to give up a few hours of State Street madness on Friday night will most definitely be rewarded, and not only because the price of the ticket is an ultra-cheap $16. Fans that hike on down to The Annex will get to kick off the Halloween festivities with a band on the cutting edge of rock, and one whose often eerie sound lends itself perfectly to Madison's most decadent and haunted weekend.

Fans must be at least 18 to get into the show. Doors open at 8:30 p.m. and the concert starts an hour later. Tickets are $18 at the door. Additional information is available at www.intheannex.com.