Boston Globe Review

[Suzuki]

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/cd_reviews/articles/2008/06/07/morning_becomes_eclectic/

Good rock bands write top-notch tunes, lay them to tape with style or vigor or pomp, and bring them to your town for annual, amped-up communion.

Great rock bands are too restless to settle for reliable high quality, but they're too smart to court change for change's sake. The great ones are master builders, cobblers of chords and moods built on established foundations but designed with fresh dimensions in perpetual play. It may be true that a half-century into the genre every pop-music idea has been heard, but there are singular combinations yet to be dreamed up.

On its surprising fifth studio album, "Evil Urges," My Morning Jacket does some serious dreaming. The Louisville, Ky., quintet began a decade ago as an indie variation on Americana - purveyors of haunted ballads drenched in reverb and deconstructed Southern rockers texturized beyond compare - and has consistently pushed forward into new territory.

The group's last recording, 2005's eclectic "Z," was an adventure in twinkling surfaces and raucous rhythms, and the following year's live CD and DVD, "Okonokos," was a window on just how singular a unit MMJ had become: scruffy jam band, tight arena rockers, and soulful country folk rolled into one.

Yet none of it prepares you for the sonic wingspan of "Evil Urges."

The album's title track, also the opening song, is a gleaming slice of R&B-flavored pop, topped with a Prince-ly falsetto and rudely interrupted with a prog-rock breakdown. The funk gets still itchier on "Highly Suspicious," where frontman Jim James fairly squeals lines like "Home alone dotting your i's/ Peanut butter pudding surprise!" while a police-like battalion barks background vocals and heavy guitars bear down on the song's paranoid protagonist.

Pardon? These are the same musicians who genuflect at the altar of Crazy Horse?

In fact they are, and MMJ's woolly warmth remains intact - except now James, the group's songwriter, has extended his bear-like reach to incorporate disco, funk, classic pop; nods to Paul Westerberg, Radiohead, Springsteen, and Supertramp; and, most shockingly, soft rock straight outta the '70s. James splits the difference between the radio-ready soul of the Spinners and the MOR pop of England Dan and John Ford Coley on lush, mild-mannered "Thank You Too!" and "Sec Walkin," a sparkling charmer that may single-handedly restore middle-of the-road to credibility.

Prog is another radical touchstone for MMJ, which has built its sound on rootsy, not spacey, reference points. It materializes in ways both subtle (the harmonies breathe and the keyboards glimmer on "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Pt. 1") and grand ("Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Pt. 2" shape-shifts from minimalist electro-meditation to club-ready roots-rock opera before bravely tapering to a crawl).

But wait! There's more! The '60s-style pop of "Two Halves," a quivering ballad called "Librarian," and a couple of driving, scrappy rockers - "Aluminum Park" and "Remnants" - that bring fire and urgency to an album that, for all its stylistic sprawl, feels more focused, more concentrated, than MMJ's previous collections. This music isn't blowing across distant, windswept plains; it's pouring out of killer speakers in your backyard.

Meanwhile, James merges the personal and the political in lyrics that grapple with fear and anxiety but surface triumphantly on the side of idealism. He has mentioned in recent interviews that many of the new songs were written in the first blush of a relationship that has since disintegrated, and in that light James's paeans to connection - between old friends, new lovers, and divided countrymen, who often blur into a murky body of humanity - are infused with an especially timely sense of portent. It's about erasing arbitrary, or imagined, or imposed boundaries. My Morning Jacket shows us how.

[MyLifeISought]

FANTASTIC review. Two more days to go :)

[fortbethel]

Thanks 4 posting. :)

[TFowl]

Yes, much better than that horrible horrible Rolling Stone review.