Dallas Morning News Review

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Music: Exceeding great expectations
ROCK REVIEW: Fans of genre and My Morning Jacket couldn't ask for much more
By CHRIS VOGNAR / The Dallas Morning News

My Morning Jacket's new album, Z, is a marvel of studio rock, loaded with production flourishes and haunting effects that make singer/guitarist Jim James' voice bounce from here to eternity. If you haven't seen the band live, you might wonder if it does quite as well in person as it does with headphones.

Sure enough, the band wasn't as good Friday night at Gypsy Tea Room. It was even better. More impressive still, the artists were better in ways that stood far apart from their recorded magic. Jacket built multi-bar extensions onto shimmering compositions and slammed through rock jams with an operatic intensity that never went over the top. Unlike many creatures of the studio, these guys bring their A-game to live shows.

Mr. James, his hair flying as he rocked out and strode back and forth across the stage, is a fine showman and unquestionably the band's leader. But he's not particularly verbose or ostentatious; he's far more substance than style. One of the best songs on Z is "Wordless Chorus," a title Mr. James takes seriously: He accentuated many songs with soaring wails of an emotional impact, which, like most Jacket songs, need no verbal explanation.

The band showed remarkable versatility, swinging from lonesome country twang to ferocious Southern-fried rock to catchy, pop-infused reggae. "Off the Record," from the new album, sounded like "Watching the Detectives"-era Elvis Costello, right down to the cryptic romantic lyrics. Five minutes later, Jacket, hailing from Louisville, Ky., sounded like sharp-fanged cousins of the Allman Brothers.

But Jacket paints this sonic tapestry without stealing other artists' colors – maybe you can tell what the members listened to growing up, but they've melded their influences into something both fresh and knowing of their antecedents. They're all over the place, but you never doubt that they're doing their own thing.

All of this may be secondary to the show's most obvious lesson: My Morning Jacket plays some flat-out nasty rock 'n' roll, a fact loudly appreciated by the packed Gypsy house. The band shows just as much imagination in concert as it does on its most recent album, and it conveys an unmistakable pleasure in jamming live. That's good news for rock fans, who should have plenty more opportunities to catch Jacket's class act