They released me from the hospital a few days after My Morning Jacket played at The Metro Theatre in Sydney last week. It was a good thing, because I really needed to be out for my Australia Day Eve BBQ and some cold ones. Obviously hydrating with VBs on a night where the venue was more like a sauna did not do my physical wellbeing any good. But the intravenous fluids over two days have brought me back to normal and I can tell you that this show was the gig of the year. Yes, it was even better then Nick Cave on Cockatoo Island. Let the arguments begin.

So as I sit here scratching the scabs from where the needles entered my arms, I look back on Jim James and his fabulous furry friends and recall that they played for nearly three hours. Running out onto the stage with a cape and some grotesquely large floppy hat, Jim James seemed possessed by something as the band lurched into At Dawn and his vocals filled the room bathed in a ghostly pedal steel haze. It Beats For You was a splendid song to take us away and then we got down and a bit funky with Evil Urges, the title track of their most recent release. Little did we know that we were going to get 3/5 of that album, which included both parts of Touch Me I’m Going To Scream. And scream we all did as we danced and sang and lost all the fluids from our human form.

Did I mention it was like a steam room this evening in the presence of greatness? Listening to Carl Broemel and Jim James trade guitar parts and blast the throng in rock and roll was unbelievable. Most people seemed to get the idea that An Evening With My Morning Jacket meant it was going to be a true marathon session. With a set list that was at least 27 songs long, the band delivered unto us rock, space, country and anything in between. Truly sensational: it was a sonic masterpiece. For a bit I thought it was a fidgety crowd, but since my hospitalisation, I realised it was sensible folks taking a break from the heat to drink something besides the fluid in a green can.

I ventured into the swampy pit near the stage for the last hour of the set and the boys from America’s South were truly too involved to think about the heat. It was as hot as a Kentucky BBQ as I stumbled to the front. Jim is a showman and a delight to watch as he sings and plays guitar. Patrick Hallahan beat the living hell out of his skins and his comparisons to some dude called Bozo were displayed in the power and thunder of his sticks.

The psychedelic squalls of I Think I Am Going To Hell and Jim’s impassioned singing sent me into a spiral. Was this hell? Kneeling on the floor, Anytime from MMJ’s 2005 album Z seemed like a fitting close, but the band was not done. My eyes focused on Jim, then the red eyes of bassist Two Tone Tommy and I was swept up and away to One Big Holiday from 2003’s It Still Moves. Driving guitar solos filled my soul and my ears. As the song drifted from my head, I awoke feeling good and limber in an air-conditioned hospital room. But where did that floppy hat and cape come from that was beside my bed?