Pretty Goes with Pretty

MMJ Coda (aka My Morning Crack Hit)

Apropos of this morning's post on Evil Urges: for a more personal take on My Morning Jacket—from The Tennessee Fire years—I reminisced over at Star Maker Machine today.

My Morning Jacket: Evil Urges

Z was a polarizing album for My Morning Jacket fans. A left turn from the expansive and indulgent It Still Moves, Z was concise, accessible, largely free of noodling, and more playful—not to mention the reggae influence. It seemed to baffle and irritate a segment of the band’s jammier fans. Me? I thought it sounded like a rebirth. It reconfirmed my faith in a band I was ready to write off once it seemed like they were content to be a jam-rock band. (Sorry, I think It Still Moves is a chore.) Z’s risk-taking paid off, and My Morning Jacket surprised me by making the best album of their career thus far.

Enter Evil Urges. Again the polarizing reviews. Again the baffled fans. All of it had me excited all over again. If Z was a reboot, then my anticipation for Evil Urges mirrored the way I looked forward to At Dawn after the outstanding debut, The Tennessee Fire. And like my reception to At Dawn, I feel with Evil Urges like I’m listening to a band that is growing, is enjoying their growth—but is also stumbling along the way.

The album gets off to a fantastic start. Both the title track and “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream, Part I” continue the trend of the band pushing its own envelope. The opener is all falsetto vocals over rhythms that again have a vague island feel, before breaking into a guitar freakout in the last third. The gorgeous “Touch Me” follows with propulsive, dancelike rhythms—“part II,” which closes the album, is an outright dance track—belying MMJ’s ongoing ambition to transcend whatever category you might think to put them in. It might be the highlight of the album. Two tracks in, Evil Urges is shaping up to be the best album MMJ has ever done.

Then “Highly Suspicious” comes in and fucks everything up.

Like a bad Faith No More parody, “Highly Suspicious” sounds like a novelty song that might’ve been funny if I were listening to Green Jello or, for that matter, Faith No More. But the electro rhythm section, the clownish falsettos—it’s an insult to Prince to say Jim James is aping Prince; and it’s an insult to the quality of the vocals on “Evil Urges,” too—not to mention the unforgivable lame chorus, make this the worst song MMJ have ever put to tape. It nearly derails the entire album.

Thank god we live in the age of iTunes, where fixing this album is as simple as deleting the track from the library, so that the lush “Touch Me” segues perfectly into the perfectly crafted “I’m Amazed,” with its sing-along verses, guitar hooks, and bluesy solo. For fans that like MMJ most when they embrace their southern rock roots, this is the jam of the year.

The song feels like a single, like a real attempt to capture an even bigger fanbase than they’ve already got. Nothing wrong with that—but from here on Evil Urges starts to feel like every song is making the same grab. The treacly “Thank You Too!” is a sap-filled attempt to get on every wedding DJ’s permanent playlist; “Sec Walkin’” has a nice pedal steel but is sabotaged by its early-90s keyboards and syrupy strings, while it and “Two  Halves” both feature garish backing vocals. For pretty much the whole second half of the record, James seems to lose the plot altogether as he gets muddled up with hack pop structures and clumsy lyrics (did he really say "interweb" and “Karen of the Carpenters” in “The Librarian”?).

Most criticisms I see of this album seem to fault the band for all its left turns—the falsetto, the less–southern rockin’ moments. That’s really a critique of the first few songs (and the closer), ignoring the rest. (What fan of MMJ’s more traditional sound isn’t happy with the heartfelt ballad “Look at You,” one of the few high points of the album’s second half?). My problem with this album has a lot more to do with the risks they don’t take. James is at his best when he pushes the boundaries of his songcraft—“Wordless Chorus” and “Off the Record” on Z, the first few tracks here—or when he pours his aching heart into his lyrics and delivery—all of The Tennessee Fire and the best bits of At Dawn and It Still Moves. But for most Evil Urges, MMJ seem to be making an anachronistic radio-ready record. All clearly telegraphed verses, choruses, breakdowns, and neatly fitted guitar solos. If only radio mattered any more, and if only there were a station that actually wanted contemporary southern rock, My Morning Jacket would be ready for their close-up. It’s strange that this album is getting slagged in some quarters for sounding so different, when in fact only four of the thirteen tracks really push any boundaries. The rest is sadly generic and ultimately disappointing after such a strong start. There’s enough here—about half the tracks—to make the album worthwhile for most fans, and I still feel optimistic about MMJ’s overall trajectory. They are still capable of surprising me, and I make no guesses about there they’ll go next.

• My Morning Jacket, Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, pt. 1

My Listening Hours: Looking Forward

There are six albums on the  horizon that have perked up my ears, and four of them have me marking my calendar for essential trips to the record store. Have a look at this list and tell me what you're looking forward to.

R.E.M., Accelerate (4/1)
R.E.M. fans will forever debate which was the best era for the band and where it all went wrong. I think everyone pinpoints it differently. Me, I give them more credit than most: R.E.M. has exactly one bad album, and it’s Around the Sun. That means I have a tremendous amount of good will set aside for the band. “Supernatural Superserious” doesn’t bowl me over on its own but it does give me hope.

Little Ones, Terry Tales & Fallen Gates EP (4/8)
April 8 is a big release date for indie rock—Tapes n Tapes, Breeders, Gnarles Barkley, Nick Cave, Clinic, Man Man, and Colin Meloy—but I can’t say I’m stoked on any of it. The only album I am excited about is a new EP from the Little Ones. When I picked up their Sing Song EP early last year, I thought it was solid if nothing new. Boy, my opinions have changed since then. Those seven songs were stuck on repeat in my house for months on end. Seeing them live only enhanced my feelings—honestly I have never in my life seen a happier band on stage before. Those guys had stupid grins on their faces from beginning to end, I walked out of that show saying to my wife “I hope that never changes for them.” This EP—and the new full length, slated for the summer—are among my most-anticipated releases for the year.

Portishead, Third (4/29)
I’m tempted by the hype here. I loved Dummy when I was in college in the late-90s, and I thought their second album was pretty good but not great. I haven’t listened to either in at least five years, maybe longer. But everyone who’s heard the leak seems to be blown away by it. I’m keeping my ears open.

Mates of State, Re-Arrange Us (5/20)
Bring it Back just sorta fell into my house about a year ago, and it took me probably four or five months to even care enough to try it out—so convinced was I that this was nothing more than straightforward indie rock (ho-hum). Okay, it kinda more or less was. And occasionally Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel weren't quite as on the money as they thought they were when it came to harmonizing. But! I just couldn't deny the pop hooks. Every song is catchy as all get-out and just fun to sing along with, occasionally flat harmonies be damned.

The Notwist,  The Devil, You + Me (early June)
Finally, finally, finally! I flipped out for Neon Golden when it came out six freakin’ years ago. I still put it on now and again, and at least some of these guys are also in the Tied & Tickled Trio, whom I think I love even more. That said, the new track, "Good Lies," doesn’t thrill me on its own. There’s something kinda dated about it. Nevertheless I’ll be picking this one up as soon as it hits the store.

Spiritualized, Songs in A & E (6/3)
Ever since picking up Lazer-Guided Melodies a few months back, I’ve been hovering around the Spiritualized used bin each time I go to Amoeba, on the lookout for commenter-recommended Pure Phase or the canonical classic Ladies and Gentlemen, We are Floating in Space. No such luck, though the bin is filled with post-Ladies & Gents albums. Perhaps not a good sign. I likely won’t buy this album right away because I’m attracted to the idea of taking this band in roughly chronological order. But we’ll see if that holds up once the mp3s make their way out.

My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges (6/10)
I was ready to write My Morning Jacket off after It Still Moves, which I found too jammy and not terribly engaging. But 2005’s Z brought the band back into my good graces. In fact, I think Z is the best album the band has done to date—a claim that sets my brilliant wife on edge, due to her steadfast allegiance to their outstanding first album, The Tennessee Fire. Of everything listed here, Evil Urges has the most potential to blow me away and the most potential to totally disappoint me. I’ve been both places with MMJ so I’m trying to manage my expectations and have been ignoring most pre-release hype posts.

And you? What's coming down the pike that's got you excited?

Albums of My Life

Last week I referred to Paul Simon’s Graceland as an “album of my life.” Coincidentally, this thread at Last Plane to Jakarta took a brief tangent into what constitutes a “life-changing album.” Two different concepts, and I’ve had both on my mind in the last few days. The first is a lot easier to find examples of: albums that I played intensely during some period of my life, to the point of becoming something other than good or great albums; rather, they're the soundtrack to memories. The second category, life-changing albums, is harder to figure out. Before I try to sort that one out, I want to think about the other.

Albums of my life. Going back as far as I can, my childhood was filled with Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, Ry Cooder. I have strong mental associations with all those artists, and in retrospect they all must have set some kind of foundation for what I’ve come to like today.

George Michael’s Faith might have been the very first album I ever viewed as wholly mine: an cassette I kept in my own room, played on my own walkman. INXS’s Kick and Run-DMC’s Raising Hell, too. In elementary school I would walk laps around the track during recess with Danny Casares as we tried to piece together the lyrics to “You Be Illin’ from memory. By sixth grade I was transfixed by Appetite for Destruction—probably the first album I’d ever associated with danger. This led to junior high and high school, where Master of Puppets, Rust in Peace, and Persistence of Time set the template for my taste in metal. By my junior or senior year I was transitioning out of metal and into something else: Rollins Band (particularly the early stuff), Tool, and a band I’d discovered through a blind purchase at Tower Records, Craw, all made music that was heavy but was more dynamic musically and more sophisticated lyrically and emotionally.

Somehow from there I stumbled into indie rock without any real guidance (which I’ve written about before). By then I’d lost interest in heaviness but was actively looking for music that shifted dynamically. Slint, Fugazi, Rodan, Codeine. I vividly recall moving to college and trying to describe the kind of music I liked to a kid I’d met in the dorms. “It can be really loud and really screamy, but it can also get really quiet, and it’s not heavy like metal.” He just looked at me and said “what, you mean emo?”

Another dormmate gave me a dubbed cassette full of songs by what I thought was some friend of hers; the recording quality was exceptionally poor and all the label said was “Elliott Smith.” I played the hell out of the tape but was embarrassed to tell the girl I dug it so much because it seemed a little weird to be really into her random friend’s music. Six months later I was in a record store and saw the album in the bin—a real record by a real guy on a real label, and best of all that was another album (Roman Candle) in the bins as well!

The rest of college was Tortoise, June of 44, Blonde Redhead, Unwound, Superchunk, the Pernice Brothers. After college, when I met my wife: My Morning Jacket’s The Tennessee Fire, Cat Power’s Moon Pix, Rufus Wainwright’s first album, Ryan Adams’s Heartbreaker.

We got married in September 2001: she walked down the aisle to Sigur Ros’ “Sven-g-Englar” and we danced to Low’s “Two Step.” We moved to New York not long after. If you asked me to soundtrack the winter of 2002, when we lived in a spacious but empty loft above a functioning sweatshop in a shitty part of Williamsburg, I’d have to hand you Pete Yorn’s Music for the Morning After. When we moved to Boerum Hill it was Chutes too Narrow, Michigan, and Radio Dept.’s Lesser Matters. We bought Feist’s Let it Die in Paris in 2004. We moved to L.A. in 2005 and in the last two or three years it’s been Funeral, Antonio Carlos Jobim & Elis Regina, Midlake, and most recently Andrew Bird.

These are albums of my life. And really I’m just scratching the surface—this is what I can come up with just thinking about it in the time it takes to write these words. Were I to focus on one period of my life, other albums would come into view, sort of like staring at the night sky and seeing the stars reveal themselves the longer you look.

But not all of these albums are my all-time favorites, necessarily. Some I haven’t listened to in years, either because my tastes have changed drastically (everything pre-Spiderland), because I associate them too strongly with my memories (Moon Pix), because they’ve just not aged well (sadly, Spiderland), or because they’re frankly not that good (Music for the Morning After).

Thus we come to the difference between an album of my life and an album that changed my life. More on that later this week.

Three Perspectives on the Junior Slump

I’m late to the game in posting any sort of top ten list for the year that was—that’s a game strictly played in December, I think. And anyway I don’t think I’d be able to rank my favorite albums of the year in any satisfactory heirarchy. There was some good, even great stuff—Clap Your Hands Say Yeah  and The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema both spring to mind—but there wasn’t that one band, that one album, that just shattered everything. There was no band that offered a brand new, unexpectedly masterful sound. For all the bands and albums I loved this year, I’d be hard pressed to say I heard anything new.

But worth noting is that a whole slew of groups that once knocked me out that way did have new stuff this year. Low’s The Great Destroyer; Sigur Ros’ Takk…; Sufjan Stevens' Illinois; and My Morning Jacket’s Z. And three of these albums (sorry Low) were indeed good or great, rightfully popping up on critics’ best of lists all over. Each of these groups share one thing in common: they’ve carved out an unmistakable sound. You know instantly that you are hearing them even if you’ve never heard the particular song that’s come on. They are all strong on first impressions. The challenge, then, is to keep it fresh. It can be a false comfort to know you sound unlike anyone else; the danger is sounding too much like yourself. For my money, the group I’d most written off was the one that really delivered: My Morning Jacket made the best album of their career.

I first heard MMJ back when their first album came out. I was a record store clerk bored with all the promos, desperate to hear something new—so desperate I decided to put on something from Darla Records, knowing full well that it was going to be twee as all get out. Well, that day was like a revelation. Jim James’s ultra-reverbed vocals soaring over the largely acoustic rock was mesmerizing, powerful, heartbreakin’—and catchy. I listened to The Tennessee Fire nonstop for a year straight. It possessed me.

Curious, then, that none of MMJ's following albums stuck with me too well. I'd played them out. I really liked the first half of At Dawn, but somewhere around the blues jam halfway through, they lost me. By the time It Still Moves came out, I'd completely lost interest. Problem being, I think, that they were too much the same. Maybe they got more rockin' as the albums went on, but substantially, it was the same reverbed-out formula (not to mention all of their albums are long).

There was a trajectory there: brilliant debut, followed by a relatively strong sophomore outing, and then a lackluster third album that seems too comfortable in its own sound. MMJ is ahead of the curve, but you can see the same thing happening with Sigur Ros and Sufjan Stevens (if you count their breakout albums, Agaetis Byrgun and Michigan, respectively, as their “debuts”). In each case, the first time I heard them, it was like an awakening—something completely and utterly unique. And I played the shit out all of them, literally months on end of listening to them over and over again. Sigur Ros came back with their next album, ( ). Like MMJ’s At Dawn, it was more ambitious, longer, more difficult to get through, but still admirable. You got the sense that the groups were stretching out a little now that they had a fanbase that would indulge them. And for people who missed the boat on the previous albums, these second albums still pack that brilliant first impression: their sound is still utterly their own and they haven’t worn out their welcome.

This is where I'm at with Stevens right now. I know I’m taking a few liberties here—Michigan was his third album, and Illinois his fifth—but Michigan was the one that put him on the radar, and Illinois is the more “official” follow up. Like At Dawn and ( ), Illinois follows the pattern: longer, more ambitious, more indulgent, but still strong. It’s not time to write him off yet. We reserve that for the third album.

The third album: that’s where I lost my faith in My Morning Jacket a couple of years ago, and where I find myself at odds with Sigur Ros right now. (And you can bet if Stevens makes a whispery forlorn album all about Swedes and dairy in Wisconsin, with those same McSweeney’s-esque song titles and banjo/woodwind backing band, that’s where I’ll be with him, too.) Your hope—and you do have the highest of hopes, because let’s not forget that this band did destroy you at one time—is the band will find a way to focus the newfound ambition of the last record and refine it through some modicum of growing musical sophistication. But no, my sense of the new Sigur Ros, Takk…, is similar to how I felt about It Still Moves: I can barely muster a sense of disappointment, because it met my expectations but fell well short of my hopes.

Where MMJ is concerned, I so much lost touch with what they were up to that I didn't even realize the new album had been released, until I saw a few polarizing posts sprinkled around the web. I was ready to toss it off, but the very fact that the new record inspired more than a yawn—in fact, that a few true fans felt it flat out sucked—propelled me to go to their site and check a few new songs out. I'd heard that they'd "changed"—accusations of a reggae influence, of all things!—so I now wanted to see just how so (and how badly).

And what do you know, I totally fucking love it. It’s easily one of the best albums of the year. They clipped off the jam-band urges, made their shortest record to date, kept the reverb on the vocals but brought clarity to the rest of the music—and they atoned for the greatest sin of their last album by making this the catchiest album they’ve made to date.

The good news is these guys have been one or two records ahead of Sigur Ros and Stevens. Here’s hoping both acts turn similar corners. (Speaking of losing the reverb, I’d love to hear a “raw” Sigur Ros. I’d love to hear something a little more abrasive. I think it could all be done in the way they are recorded; they wouldn’t even need to change the way they write songs). I’ve got my fingers crossed for all of them. Is it so much to ask to be astounded every time?