•
Rating:
My Morning Jacket, how to say: "one of the most underrated bands of recent years".
Seven albums (plus a great live album) in constant growth, from that "Tennessee Fire" from 1999 to today. The imperative is to win, right? The goal is only profit, and every means possible, they said.
And yet, no, sometimes you change paths.
They're used to it, see the rhythmic nod to the best of the '80s in "Compound Fracture," with that final Rhodes that makes "Get Lucky" seem like a... well, never mind.
Find me, today, a singer with such technique combined with an expressive strength comparable to that of Jim James.
It's easy to understand by frequenting their battleground: arpeggiated acoustic guitars and endless choruses (listen to "Like a River" and "Get the Point").
Choruses that almost become howls in the schizophrenic funk of "Spring (Among the Living)."
The sound exploration is reminiscent of the previous "Circuital" (ATO Records, 2011), not surprisingly the producer is the same, Tucker Martine. But the result is completely different, you could say more defined, but not just a high & dry work, you know. You can feel the great "mastery of the medium" on this album, but never going overboard.
Like painters who now push colors to create something from within the canvas.
Each song seems to take us to a different universe while maintaining a strong identity throughout all forty-eight minutes.
Personally, I find the closing of the circle in a song like "Tropics (Erase Traces)," where over five minutes, they alternate psychotic reveries with imperious spacefly breaks.
Closing the canvas is the beautiful "Only Memories Remain," with black drums and Jim James's voice in the foreground, taking us back to that afternoon when we discovered sexuality.
Amid an endless amount of music deemed useless by birthright, more devoted to YouTube views than to expressing something, a band that still takes four years to write, develop, and metabolize an album.
A kind of nostalgia, a burning energy of memories of what was and perhaps will return in the future, where My Morning Jacket awaits us.
It seems like I'm describing the perfect album to you, and yet.
Tracklist and Videos
Loading comments slowly
