Home > audiofiles

Freeplay: My Morning Jacket
By Cory Casciato
casciato@mscd.edu

My Morning Jacket Live at Headliners Music Hall 9.26.03 To download Live at Headliners Music Hall 9.26.2003 visit http://www.archive.org/details/mmj2003-09-26.shnf. Click on the VBR ZIP link on the upper left hand side to get a single file containing the whole show as high-quality MP3s.

Just what the hell is My Morning Jacket?

As a band name, it says almost nothing. At best, it’s an obscurely catchy collection of words that suggest a love of a word’s sound over its meaning.

Put on a record, then, and what’s revealed? The roots are classic rock, outlaw country and backwoods folk. Upon closer examination, diverse elements emerge. Intermittent gusts of funk, reggae and soul blow by, jagged spikes of heavy metal lurk below the surface, and the old New Wave makes an occasional ripple. Layers of reverb cement it together, enveloping everything in a warm, familiar embrace.

At first the albums can seem slight, even inconsequential. They’re not filled with hit singles or crafty gimmicks. What they have are songs about real emotions built on solid musicianship and classic melodies and delivered with a wry sense of humor.

A lazy critic could slap any of a half dozen labels on it, from tired standards like indie rock or alt-country to wholly useless creations like shoegaze folk or neo-jam. None would say the least about what My Morning Jacket is.

Instead of a label, let me offer a metaphor. My Morning Jacket is musical moonshine. Moonshine is unrefined white lightning that goes from zero to drunk in under 30 seconds. Clear as water and stored in mason jars, it doesn’t look like much but it kicks like a mule. It’s the essence of inebriation–pure grain liquor without pretension, existing for the singular purpose of knocking users clean out of their skulls.

Like the finest moonshine, My Morning Jacket hails from Kentucky. Like the best ’shiners, the band’s leader, Jim James, crafts his brew with loving care by time-honored methods. And like any hooch, it can be appreciated at home, perhaps sitting on the back porch as twilight fades to full black, but it’s best enjoyed in the company of a few hundred other hollering idiots hopped up on the same sauce.

Live, My Morning Jacket’s songs ring out with such conviction and bravado there’s no question they embody the spirit of rock and roll. The good songs edge toward great, the great songs become intoxicating.

Just to be clear, I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing the band. My knowledge of their live power comes from their policy of allowing taping and trading of shows and the kind people at archive.org. My current favorite is a 2003 set at Headliners Music Hall. In front of a rowdy, appreciative audience they tear through some of their finest material with reckless abandon and vibrant passion. They veer from mood to mood, casting one song as an acoustic lament, another as a raging vamp, pulling it all off with consummate skill. The drums are a bit too loud, the vocals occasionally muffled, but the overall quality is good. It’s just the thing to hold me until those Kentucky boys make it to Denver. When they do, I’ll be up front, hooting and hollering, drunk on rock and roll.