Rating:   37 Ratings     12345  

My Morning Jacket It Still Moves ATO/BMG

      As much I love being one of those people who can say, "I saw them back when nobody even knew who they were," sometimes it's much better to know that you've been missing out on a band for far too long. Gone are the days when a song was just a song. Those days got swallowed up and vanished right alongside of that unexplained feeling you got when you realized a band or certain kind of music was just right for you. You thought about music, you thought about the band, you tried to think about what they thought about. When you like something so much, naturally, you want to know more about it. You want to know where it's coming from, who's bringing it to you, and how you can get more.

Track listing: 01 Mahgeeta 02 Dancefloors 03 Golden 04 Master Plan 05 One Big Holiday 06 Will Sing You Songs 07 Easy Mornin' Rebel 08 Run Thru 09 Rollin' Back 10 Just One Thing 11 Steam Engine 12 One In The Same

Welcome to "I Love That Band 101."

      We've all done it. From my own experience I can tell you that it has undoubtedly helped me appreciate the music of many people more so and on a different level than I could have done otherwise. But sometimes you need to be shaken out of your cozy hiding place behind all those records that you know so much about. Sometimes you need something to grab you, maybe even confuse you, just to show you that there's more good music out there than you'll ever be able to get your hands on. A comforting feeling knowing that your ears will never go stale? A hard pill to swallow because it is a proven fact that you will miss out on music you would have really liked? Even loved?

This is our music and this is what it does to us. If we didn't love it, we wouldn't keep coming back.

      When I bought It Still Moves by My Morning Jacket, I had heard so little of them and about them that my spending $12.99 on their record was a qualified risk. I'd caught the tail end of their song on the radio. I heard the DJ say that they recorded their album in a silo. I knew I had missed them at a festival I'd been to over the summer. That was it. The surprise that would be my own over the next few weeks is one that has sparked a full-fledged renaissance in my musical life. I'm ready to take chances again.

I'll get to the two things you will hear from every reviewer right off the bat...

Reverb & Neil Young.

      My Morning Jacket uses reverb like an instrument. It's present in every song, its not buried under other effects or the wail of other instruments. Its a layer, its right on top, and its just about the perfect compliment to an already perfect sound. Jim James' voice howls through every track on the record and the reverb acts as a megaphone amongst the crowd of rowdy listeners who push and pull their way through a riot of other records, making them stop and listen to this howl, and wonder whose mouth its coming from.

      Just about every review you'll read of My Morning Jacket will also include some reference to Neil Young and how much James sounds like him and how Young-esque everything is and so on and so forth and Young, Young, Young. I love Neil Young. There aren't many artists I love more than him, in fact, but quite honestly, I didn't think about him for one second when I first heard this record. Once its mentioned (now that it has been and you have no choice but to think about it from here on out), sure you can hear the similarity in the voices of Young and James, but that's about it. Two different birds on two different flights. It is easy to draw similarities between old musicians and young ones so that people will connect with a band's sound without actually hearing it, but we're smarter than that. We know it is all meaningless until you hear the darn thing for yourself.

      With that being said, i feel its safe to actually move on to the music here. "Mahgeetah," the album's opener aptly sets the stage for all of the ensuing madness. What you hear in the beginning of the track is not very similar to what you hear at the end. There is an element of adventure in every song on the album, but since My Morning Jacket finds completely different ways to approach the feel of their songs, nothing seems stale, no song seems to have an unnecessary part or section. With "Mahgeetah" being my first listen to a full song from this band, i could only hope that the rest of tunes would keep me guessing as this one had. Verse, Chorus, Rinse, Repeat- the age-old process was traded in for harmonies that snuck on the scene about half way through the tune only to be re-traded in favor of countrified electric guitar riffs and a solo sandwiched at song's end.

      The backwoods guitars hang around and take a step forward (with the rest of the instruments following suit) on, "Dancefloors," the album's second track. This time, however, the fiery playing is met head on by a rollicking piano and revivalist horns. Show me the barn in Kentucky where this album was recorded and I will show you walls covered in ash. This tune has enough power and drive behind it to leave skid marks on any dancefloor whether it houses 200 or 2,000 people there to bare witness. Over the next few tunes, the band mixes up its sounds on the acoustic/electric mix of "Golden," the paced rocker that "Starts off slow, babe" in "Masterplan," then the good feeling tempo and vocal delivery of "One Big Holiday."

      With each song that It Still Moves offered on that first listen, I found my head nodding in different ways. I realized these songs were just flat out like nothing I'd heard before. They all had the elements of the things I like and am looking for in a record these days, but they assembled the pieces like no one else that I've ever heard. Where some records have a few keepers among the small fish or redeeming qualities that make you listen a few more times, this album has a hand full of things to offer and wait for in each song. A few more highlights include the sneak attack ending of "I Will Sing You Songs." The sultry horns of "Easy Morning Rebel" and "Rollin' Back," the track that houses my favorite lyric on the whole record:

"Time I don't think I waste it, it just seems to disappear."

Jim James is an everyman type of writer whether by virtue of effort or by sheer luck. Sometimes he's speaking to a current or lost love and sometimes he's telling a story or telling of a general hope for the world. The things he says in a song are the very things that we act out and feel on a daily basis, i.e.:

"Sometimes I wanna lay down, babe.
Sometimes I wanna stand up and fight.
Sometimes it runs its course in a day.
Sometimes it goes for night after night."

And:

"It wasn't till I woke up
That I could hold down a joke or job or dream
But all three are one in the same
And ALL then are one in the same
And all us are one in the same."

Or:

"If we holler loud and make our way We'd all live one big holiday."

If he doesn't give you the emotion you are feeling at the very moment, he gives you one that you have felt in the past and will, most assuredly, feel in the future.

      Granted, the harmonies aren't giving Motown a run for it's money, but they are far beyond the realm of simply warranting a mention. The reason that I like them so much is that My Morning Jacket uses harmony in such interesting ways. Just as I said that they use reverb as an instrument, I am saying that their harmonies are the slide guitar of their reverb. Same instrument, completely different sound, new scope of possibilities. With "Mahgeetah" they are the second act that bridges the song to the solo. On "I Will Sing You Songs" they compete, fairly, with the rising instrumentation to crescendo the song in complete splendor. And on, "Steam Engine" they take an already beautiful and atmospheric landscape of sound and bring it to the tipping point, giving the song an amazing left turn off of the highway and back onto the dirt roads that they spun their tires on through the whole album.

      You will eventually notice through research or buying the album that i did not make mention of every song. Some things, you will just have to experience for yourself. They are all good. No, they are all great songs. Pick up the disc (or vinyl, bless their hearts) and you will soon see what I am trying to tell you here.

      Aside from having a new album that keeps me listening over and over again, possibly the best thing to come from my purchase of It Still Moves was the moment I went to the band's website and found out that in addition to a slew of singles and EP's, they have two previous full length albums. So as I sit down with the album that preceded the one I have just described to you, At Dawn, I pour from the bottle of wine that is mentioned several times on the former and raise my glass to the boys of My Morning Jacket. Music is just music again, thanks.

-Joel Armato 01/20/04