I'm Amazed

As a follow-up to last week's post about the circulation of the new My Morning Jacket song, I have since had the good fortunate to illegally get my hands on Evil Urges in its entirety. I didn't want to let other pirates' opinions affect my own, so I decided to give it a dozen listens, let it settle in, and then come up with my own conclusion about the record. All I have to say is I now understand why critics consider these guys among an elite handful of bands who couldn't make a bad album if they tried. MMJ are easily in the same company as Radiohead, Spoon, and The Hold Steady.

The thing that is so admirable about Evil Urges is how it manages to perfectly combine the experimentation so prevalent on their last effort, Z, with the avant-garde, yet classic Southern guitar sound most associated with earlier albums It Still Moves and At Dawn. Jim James and gang take us for a ride during the first several tracks, which seem as if they could have easily been remnants from Z based on their respective falsetto vocals, schizophrenic tempos, and genre-straddling guitar riffs. "Highly Suspicious" is just that, and is hands down the band's weirdest track to date, sounding somewhere in between Prince and Gwar. The change is like night and day when we reach "I'm Amazed" -- a classic rock tune that couldn't have been done better by Skynyrd if they tried. This is when things start to sound a little more familiar to longtime MMJ fans. James' voice soars on the gorgeously sincere 1-2 punch that is "Thank You Too"/ "Sec Walkin'". We are then treated to the band's closest encounter to the radio-friendly world with the poppy "Two Halves" -- a apparent nod to early rock influences along the likes of Buddy Holly and The Everly Brothers.

The band eases the listener into a delightful slide-guitar, alt-country-induced coma on "Librarian" (see lyric: "since we got the Interweb, these [books] hardly get used...") and "Look At You" before ripping the joint apart on "Aluminum Park" and "Remnants" -- the latter of which is simply straight-up, balls to the wall rock. The album's aural roller coaster ride continues on the album's closing songs, culminating on the eight minute epic finale "Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Part 2". It is honestly hard to believe how easy it is for My Morning Jacket to seamlessly incorporate so many different influences in a mere 13 song hour-long set. But then again, this has become the band's legacy that will inevitably catapult them into rock superstardom. Granted it is only May (and there is still a month before it even hits shelves) but Evil Urges is my early pick for Album of the Year. And if you are nice enough, I just might share the love.

My Rating: 9.0 out of 10