My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges (2008)
ARTiST: My Morning Jacket
ALBUM: Evil Urges
BiTRATE: 199kbps avg
QUALiTY: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.97 Final / -V2 --vbr-new / 44.100Khz
LABEL: ATO Records
GENRE: Rock
SiZE: 83.86 megs
PLAYTiME: 0h 55min 11sec total
RiP DATE: 2008-06-06
STORE DATE: 2008-06-06
Track List:
--------
01. Evil Urges 5:11
02. Touch Me I'm Going To Scream 3:49
Pt. 1
03. Highly Suspicious 3:04
04. I'm Amazed 4:33
05. Thank You Too! 4:26
06. Sec Walkin 3:35
07. Two Halves 2:33
08. Librarian 4:16
09. Look At You 3:27
10. Aluminum Park 3:56
11. Remnants 3:01
12. Smokin from Shootin 5:04
13. Touch Me I'm Going To Scream 8:12
Pt. 2
14. Good Intentions 0:04
Release Notes:
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"Evil urges, baby," squeals Jim James in the title track of his band's fifth
studio album. "They be part of the human way!" A slinky funk strut delivered in
Prince-like falsetto that blows up into a proggy Southern-rock guitar duel,
"Evil Urges" rallies you to "Dedicate your love to any woman or man/No racial
boundary lines, no social subdivisions" and notes that "evil" is often in the
ear of the beholder.
But coming from a young band whose first three albums earned them a reputation
as hairy torchbearers of guitar-driven classic rock, the title is also about
messing with expectations. More so than 2005's mildly experimental Z, Evil Urges
explodes the band's sound with the same kind of creative leap that Wilco took on
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Radiohead took on Kid A.
MMJ's reverence for Neil Young and Crazy Horse is well documented; their Prince
fetish less so. They've covered "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" live,
employed Prince-ly nomenclature (see 2005's "It Beats 4 U") and happily mixed
drum machines and lengthy guitar jams (see 2002's space-funk-folk-rock epic
"Cobra"). But nothing in their discography could anticipate a song like "Highly
Suspicious," Evil Urges' biggest WTF moment. Squeaking out rhymes like "Home
alone dotting your i's/Peanut-butter-pudding surprise!" in helium falsetto over
boogie-rock guitar outbursts, drill-sergeant backing vocals and clipped drum
spasms, it's better suited to an I Love the '80s! mix, set between "Little Red
Corvette" and Devo's "Whip It," than to a My Morning Jacket album. (And, dude, I
don't even want to know what a "peanut-butter-pudding surprise" is.) It's both
hilarious and badass.
MMJ also embrace prog rock — a direction that initially seems at odds with their
populist jam-band vibe. But James is determined to have it both ways. The
elaborate, shimmering vocal overdubs on "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, Part 1"
recall 10cc's prog-pop landmark "I'm Not in Love." And the record's 13-minute
tag-team finale, "Smokin From Shootin" and "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, Part
2," morphs between Radiohead's computer-assisted soul, avant-roots rock and a
chugging Pink Floyd space anthem. "Oh! This feeling is wonderful! Don't you ever
turn it off!" sings James on the latter song, amid majestic Fender Rhodes chords
and Loch Ness monster slide guitar, building to a surprise ending sure to result
in thousands of spilled bongs. He could be singing about sex. He could be
singing about MDMA. And when he notes how long it's been since he's been
challenged to think "about the way things are" and "the way they could be," he
could even be singing about a certain presidential candidate. Just as there are
innumerable sexual metaphors, James knows sex can be a metaphor for innumerable
things.
Yet you sense that for all his freaky ambition, James is still an old-fashioned
guy trying to reconcile his love of tradition with the modern world. One of the
record's standouts is "Librarian," an acoustic love ballad that's so archaic
it's clearly a hallucination: The singer wanders through book stacks ("Since we
got the Interweb, these hardly get used") and sees his crush listening to the
Carpenters on AM radio. But songs, like books, invent their own reality, and by
the time he reaches the hoary nerd-girl come-on, "Take off those glasses and let
down your hair for me," it's enough to make you forswear your Amazon account.
There are lots of old-school moments like this on Evil Urges. Some showcase
group vocals; for the first time, James' bandmates sing backup, adding a shaggy
richness to the mix. "Two Halves" is a love letter to youth with a Frankie Valli
doo-wop touch. "I'm Amazed" is a slow-grind beer-slosher with a hollered
good-ol'-boy chorus, while "Sec Walkin'" shows off James' deep love of Seventies
soul. Evil Urges refutes the idea that indie rock these days is too white. It's
a beautifully miscegenated mess: "Thank You Too" conjures the Stylistics,
"Aluminum Park" conjures the Replacements, and it's all good.
That shape-shifting is fitting for a band whose leader recently appeared in
whiteface in Todd Haynes' surreal Bob Dylan biopic, I'm Not There, which dealt
with an icon whose music could never be reduced to mere tradition. James seems
well aware that any definition of "classic rock" that doesn't include Prince,
Radiohead and Wilco is pretty bereft. Now, with Evil Urges, he can add My
Morning Jacket to that list.
My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges (2008)
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