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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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My Morning Jacket: The Slow Climb to Success
Wednesday 26 June @ 10:29:57 |
 by Rob van Alstyne
When My Morning Jacket released At Dawn near the beginning of 2001, the American record buying public simply wasn’t ready. What other explanation could there be for a record as captivatingly rendered and achingly beautiful somehow getting lost in the indie-rock shuffle? Released on a tiny, albeit great label (Darla records), the band didn’t even have a booking agent at the time, ensuring that shows in promotion of the album outside of their Louisville, KY home were few and far between. Singer-guitarist Jim James, 24, had done his best to make sure At Dawn would be an all consuming effort for his band: “We just put the record together until it felt right. We wanted the record to have peaks and valleys, places you could hide in it and places where it exploded. It was important to just keep adding parts until we felt the listener could get everything out of the record that they needed. That’s what we aimed for because that’s what my favorite records have always done.”
Although far from setting an easy standard for themselves, James and his band somehow managed to reach their lofty goals while self-producing the monstrously epic 14-track 76-minute album. The band pulled out every musical trick possible on At Dawn, jumping from unadorned banjo-led death ballads coated in vocal reverb (“If it Smashes Down”), to jubilant bar-room rockers (“Just Because I Do”). The band never even stands still long enough to let the listener marvel at their mastery of multiple genres.
Fortunately, records as good as At Dawn have a way of finding their audience regardless of the industry odds stacked against them. As word began to spread about the bands potent blend of rustic folk, science fiction production values and classic pop sensibilities, things finally started happening for the Jacket. Now, more than 18 months after At Dawn’s release, the band is riding high in the wake of national tours opening up for such larger names as Beth Orton and Guided By Voices. It’s a testament to the diversity of the Jacket’s musical repertoire that they didn’t seem particularly out of place on either bill, equally well suited for Orton’s sophisticated British folk and Robert Pollard’s classic rock revival.
Trying to pinpoint the Jacket’s sound is difficult, and only getting harder thanks to the eccentric bent present on their two new EP’s. The first, a split release with Songs: Ohia on the Jade Tree label, features three new full-band tracks that try out a more aggressive rock direction (“O the One that is Real”) while still plying their hand at classic soulful pop (“Come Closer”). The overall effect is compelling, but not far removed from At Dawn. Where things really get intriguing is on Chocolate and Ice, recorded and produced in its entirety by James, and released on San Francisco’s Badman Recording Co.
In the past, a critic could best approximate the Jacket’s sound by employing tricky mix ‘n’ match references. My personal favorite: a more in-tune Neil Young fronting Radiohead if they were from the American South and hadn’t turned their backs on guitars. Granted, it wasn’t an easy sound to conjure in your head, and still only a loose approximation of My Morning Jacket’s power, but now even that scattershot attempt at classification falls short. Chocolate and Ice shows James to be an artist on the move who’s creating way outside the margins of traditional rock classification. The sprawling 23-minute “Cobra” provides the proof; no longer content to jump between genres on whole albums, James sets out to cover most of the stylistic musical universe in just one song. Beginning with a funky Talking Heads-infused jitter, “Cobra” later breaks down into prog rock wonkery before shifting into acoustic terrain. Not all of it works, but you have to admire the pluck of Jim James for trying it all.
As James continues to drive his band towards previously unexplored musical terrain and an increasingly-maddening-to-classify hybrid sound, he prefers to be vague about details on the groups pending third full-length. “The third record is going to be bigger and louder and more magical I hope,” says James. “We always like trying to turn up the magic knob and this time we’re turning up the volume knob as well. We put out the EP’s to sort of consciously act as appetizers while we sort out what label is going to put the next record out. After we finish up touring on At Dawn we’re going to lock ourselves in the studio and just go to work for a while.”
My Morning Jacket plays Thurs., June 27th, at First Avenue with Guided By Voices. 5:30 p.m. $15/$18. 21+. 701 1st Ave. N., Mpls. 612-338-8388.
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