My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges

My Morning Jacket’s ascension to the top of the rock pantheon has been a slow, yet steady, rise. Not for this Louisville, Kentucky five-piece overnight sensationalism, but instead a creeping approach. Yet here they are; one of the very best rock ‘n roll bands in the world.

What sets them, alongside the likes of Radiohead, apart from so many of their contemporaries? It’s simple – they’re prepared to challenge themselves on a continual basis, to buck expectations, to deliver the unexpected. Their emergence has found them abandoning their early sound, in favour of a richer and more varied template, leading many critics to question whether the My Morning Jacket presented on previous album Z and Evil Urges can hold a candle to At Dawn or It Still Moves era band. But for those wanting a revisionist approach, look to the likes of Band of Horses or Fleet Foxes, who ape early MMJ perfectly satisfactorily, if not a touch perfunctorily.

Evil Urges takes the wide screen approach of Z – heard here on the likes of Touch Me I’m Going to Scream pt 1 and particularly ...pt 2 – and augment it with Prince funk-isms like the wicked Highly Suspicious, smooth brilliance on Library, anthemic fist-pumpers such as I’m Amazed, rock workouts on Aluminium Park and all spots in-between. All the while, the band deliver their most song-focussed numbers of their career, with each feeling on Evil Urges distinct and different to what the band have done before.

This is why My Morning Jacket are such a damn exciting group. A line like “Peanut butter pudding surprise!” or “Since we got the interweb these things hardly get used” is odd, quirky, and head-scratchingly odd, but Jim James’ amazing falsetto delivers it with such passion and conviction that it’s hard not to deem that HE believes. So you judge it as true, too. Trust in My Morning Jacket: they’re a band who make the redemptive and exhilarating power of rock ‘n roll a reality.

Evil Urges is out through ATO Records/Spunk!