FEST FLASHBACK: High Sierra Music Festival 2006

[KC]

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/concerts/42103/fest-flashback-high-sierra/
"In most cases, each group plays twice during the festival's four days. This helps eliminate scheduling conflicts and affords listeners a second opportunity to enjoy someone who knocked them over on the first go-round. Many of the bands camp onsite and mingle with the masses. There's an informality and camaraderie that's unlike any other music festival I've attended. You frequently find yourself sharing beers with the artists who floored you earlier in the day. The musicians seem to enjoy the atmosphere as much as the attendees, and it inspires relaxed, spontaneous performances.

Case in point, My Morning Jacket's late-night Friday set. While the days are spent outdoors, once the moon is high, things move inside to elaborately decorated spaces. Jim James and his Olympian rockers performed in a room he came to call the "Arctic Tent"—a place of snowflakes, spliff-smoking polar bears, and glowing rollergirls.

Like a curvaceous, undulating dream, MMJ slowly built a massive wall of sound that permeated every corner of the hall. It felt like the most exquisite high school dance one could imagine, and the urge to sway gently with a stranger during beautifully bruised jewels like "Hopefully" was strong. Besides extended, exploratory runs through cuts from Z—especially the skippingly bombastic "It Beats For You" and a twistingly exploratory "Off The Record"—they dipped way back in their catalog, revealing the classic pop genius that's always been present but is only now being fully revealed. All was unrushed, and James' eyes glimmered with a playful twinkle, and his between-song patter further lured us into the collective spell.

It was completely different from the widescreen rock of their main stage performance the next night—one which more closely resembled their head-of-steam onslaught at Bonnaroo a few weeks earlier. MMJ's late night sojourn had a completeness of character and luxuriant emotional depth. There are no halfway measures with this band. They reach into the very dark and light of you. Maybe not all are ready to have their essence stimulated but creeping past the 3 a.m. hour, a roomful of us exhaled a collective sigh, drunk on the Louisville moonshine, warmed from the inside, carried away by terrestrially bound angels. "