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Music reviews |
My Morning Jacket - It Still Moves
72 minutes of gorgeous southern rock, with few missteps. Too bad about that muddy production.
ATO Records
Release date: 9/9/03
Rating: B1. Mahgeetah 5:56
2. Dancefloors 5:38
3. Golden 4:39
4. Master Plan 5:05
5. One Big Holiday 5:21
6. I Will Sing You Songs 9:18
7. Easy Morning Rebel 5:09
8. Run Thru 5:45
9. Rollin' Back 7:50
10. Just One Thing 3:13
11. Steam Engine 7:26
12. One in the Same 6:23The third album by Louisville, Kentucky’s My Morning Jacket, their major-label debut (on Dave Matthews’ ATO Records), is a real achievement, a pleasure to listen to.
All right, perhaps not all 71 minutes and 43 seconds of it are a pleasure. (After all, that's just 2:17 short of what the CD format can hold.) That would have been truly amazing. But most of the record is terrific.
The record evinces a passing similarity to Beachwood Sparks’ decent 2001 Once We Were Trees – that psychedelic-country record’s spacy twang is in abundance here – but It Still Moves is even better. On high points like “Magheeta,” “Dancefloors,” “One Big Holiday,” and fragments of several other songs, the band’s reverb-laden swirl is intoxicating. The melodies are gorgeous, the playing – especially lead guitar and rhythm section – is tight, the instrumental breaks are long but not repetitive or pompous. The addition of horns and piano on some tracks are very welcome, the guitar arpeggios on several songs work wonderfully, and the semi-intelligible lyrics, if not sheer poetry, are far better than the bar-band average.
It Still Moves is southern rock, though usually less blue-collar than Skynyrd or the Allman Brothers. Though they have their occasional “Freebird” moments (the blistering guitar of “One Big Holiday’s” last few minutes, for example), My Morning Jacket more often evokes great southern-rockers of the Canadian variety – The Band and Neil Young – with a dose of Brian Wilson thrown in. To great effect, lead singer Jimmy James sounds like Young when he wails (as on “Master Plan,” which is practically an homage to Young’s “Mr. Soul”), and he sounds like Wilson when he tries to keep a tune (as on the Pet Sounds-y opener “Magheeta,” perhaps the catchiest song on the record).
The weaker tracks, however, ultimately deny It Still Moves a place in the all-time rock pantheon. These lesser songs are not tossed-off, half-baked crap, for the most part; they have a lot of heart, but they just don’t work as well.
“Run Thru” and “Just One Thing,” and parts of other songs, require you to endure that slow, grinding “Tied to the Whippin’ Post” churn that marks so much southern rock. (That Allman Brothers’ standard – and any song that evokes it – will always remind me of a mid-80s high school summer afternoon spent stopped in beach traffic on the Garden State Parkway, trapped in a car with no air conditioning, with nothing but lame New York classic-rock radio to listen to.) But that’s what the “skip” button on your CD or mp3 player is for.
“I Will Sing You Songs,” “Rollin’ Back,” and “Steam Engine,” the three longest tracks, are pretty, but all, especially the last two, tend to meander pointlessly. (In fact, I’m of two minds about whether to include “Songs,” a 9-minute epic, among the weaker tracks. The backing harmonies are pretty, the guitarwork is first-rate once it gets going, and even the long, loping fade-out isn’t bad. I guess it grows on you.)
The closer, “One in the Same,” a downer ballad accompanied only by acoustic strumming, tests your tolerance of James’ voice at its whiniest and could easily have been dropped from the album. (Though of course that would have left nine whole minutes of blank space on the CD).
The final drawback is a big one: James’ echo-ey, murky production, which detracts from even the best songs. Especially on the faster, more layered tracks, the record too often sounds like you’re hearing it on an old AM radio. (In fact, the band apparently tried for this sound, doing some recording in an empty grain silo.)
The mix too often seems to emphasize the wrong elements; the cymbals’ vibrating, for example, occasionally reaches nearly the same volume as the lead guitar. Why? Why, on the excellent “Dancefloors,” perhaps my favorite track on the album, does the mix relegate the Memphis Horns – no doubt an expensive ingredient for an unknown band, big label or no – to the background?
Shrouding songs in reverb and noise is fine if you’re My Bloody Valentine, but My Morning Jacket’s songwriting demands immediacy. These songs are so good they should be all but pouring into your ear. Instead, at times you have to listen rather closely to hear the genius behind them.
The few less-than-great tracks and that muddy production are what keep It Still Moves from being an all-time classic. The rest of the record is really that good. My Morning Jacket definitely deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as alt-country heroes Wilco, Whiskeytown, and the Old 97s, and in fact are probably better than the last two. I suspect they’re an excellent live band, too, and I hope they’ll see fit to come to DC soon.
