interview with carl-sorry if repeated

[peanut butter puddin surprise]

http://boulderdirt.com/music/article.cfm/4742
  

'It just happened'
By Eric Schmidt | Thursday October 27, 2005
 
If talking about music is like dancing about architecture - as various artists aware of the limits of verbal communication have remarked over the years - writing about My Morning Jacket seems to be another exercise in descriptive inadequacy.

The band and its widely acclaimed new album, "Z," are innovative - and good - enough to demand explanation, a theory to connect the dots and make sense of some of the most interesting music of 2005. Yet guitarist Carl Broemel says there's really nothing to explain; it all just happened naturally.

A relatively new arrival to the group, Broemel joined last year along with keyboardist Bo Koster after the amicable departure of members Johnny Quaid and Danny Cash. Broemel studied classical music at Indiana University and played in the Midwestern rock band Old Pike before connecting with My Morning Jacket to tour behind its last album, "It Still Moves," and joining permanently to record "Z."

Broemel says the new lineup accounts only partially for the quintet's evolving sound.

"I think that different sounding parts of the record are a combination of just all the stuff that happened in the last year or two with everybody," he says. "I think Bo and I definitely added out own little things... But I think everybody in the band is always open for doing new things.

"One of the things (singer-guitarist Jim James) told me early on is that this band can be whatever it needs to be. It doesn't have to be anything at all; it can be a constantly evolving project."

My Morning Jacket left its hometown of Louisville, Ky., to record "Z" in upstate New York with English producer John Leckie, known primarily for his work on British albums such as Radiohead's "The Bends" and the Stone Roses' self-titled debut. Actually, Radiohead's ever-changing, often-experimental rock is not a bad parallel to the sound of "Z" - although the comparison inevitably falls short.

Released Oct. 4, the album ranges from the atmospheric spaciness of the opening track, "Wordless Chorus," to the upbeat guitar rock of "What a Wonderful Man" and the reggae upstrokes of lead single "Off the Record." All the while, James' voice rises and falls with mournful passion behind a trademark wall of reverb - which Leckie dubbed the "sixth member of the band."

"It's always been a part of the way Jim writes; he likes to write using reverb," Broemel says of the epic soundscapes for which the band has become known. "I think for this record, we tried to manipulate it a little more, use it a little more sparingly so that the times we were using it, it's a little more special. You want to use everything on your palette with some restraint and variety."

The breadth of material on the album is enough to prompt the question of whether the group made a conscious effort to do something different on every track. Again, Broemel says "it just happened."

"I never thought of it that way," he says. "We worked up a lot of songs that didn't make it onto the album, too. So maybe just in sequencing the record and trimming off the songs that didn't really fit, we ended up with this batch of songs that somehow fits together - yet inside the record there is a lot of variety.

"But maybe that is the cohesiveness, that there is lots of variety."

For his part, James has said, "We wanted to make a record that grooved and swung but wasn't trying to imitate classic soul." In a press release for the album, he recalls trying "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."

Whatever it is, the sound extends far beyond the Southern rock or alternative country labels the band has been tagged with in the past. Still, Broemel calls "Z" - My Morning Jacket's fourth album - "reminiscent" of earlier efforts, and doesn't consider it a conscious break from tradition.

"To me, I don't think it's a big deal," he says. "But I'm in the thick of it, so it just seems natural where we are now to where we were before we made the album."

Now that "Z" is out, Broemel jokes, the band can stop worrying about it. With its energy now focused on playing live, My Morning Jacket stops at Boulder's Fox Theatre on Monday.

"Right now we're playing a lot of the new record and just kind of seeing what happens," Broemel says. "I think some of the songs will change over time... But right now we're just trying to figure out which songs to play other than the new record and how to make it all make sense."

Broemel relocated from Los Angeles to Nashville last year, and says he's enjoying living in a city where it's not unusual to walk into a bar and find people like Garth Hudson of the Band playing live for a handful of locals. But he also resists geographical categorization when it comes to his band and its Kentucky roots, saying he wouldn't describe the music as "Southern" or "Louisvillian."

"Do we sound like where we come from?" he asks. "I think if we do, it's nothing intentional."

"I guess that's the theme of this interview, that all that stuff kind of happens naturally."

[cmccubbin25]

i would love to hear the songs they scrapped...