7.01.2008

Highly Suspicious

I love My Morning Jacket. I think they're just about the best, most creative, most surprising band out there. Well, I don't love them quite as much as the Hold Steady, but while I kind of know the Hold Steady brand of awesomeness at this point, the MMJ brand of awesomeness changes at every corner. And there's something extra-awesome in that.

I love the fact that every album, and increasingly, every song on every album, seems to veer off in a different direction. Just when you thought they were going to settle in and be the Grateful Dead to Wilco's Allman Brothers (okay, so that analogy doesn't hold up for a bunch of reasons, but imagine that it's 1976, and maybe that will help, and I also can't think of a better one, so, well, so we continue...), they released Z and went in a completely different direction, without totally abandoning the whole southern rock/jam band-y thing.

So I'm still figuring out whether their most strange move yet, the song "Highly Suspicious" off the new album, "Evil Urges," is the most fantastic, ballsy, genre-leaping thing I've heard in years. Or whether it's just bar-band Prince. Which would be Jamiroquai.

Listen here.

Discuss.

Oh, then listen to "I'm Amazed," which is pretty much the song I've been waiting for them to make all along. Beautiful.

The album as a whole, by the way, kicks ass.

3 comments:

Cicily said...

They rock in all kinds of unnatural ways. Thanks for turning me on. Wait...that didn't come out right at all.

Thanks for turning me onto the band, I'm a total fan now.

~Cicily

Mike Ingram said...

I'm not entirely convinced yet about the new My Morning Jacket stuff. Maybe just because I like all the other My Morning Jacket stuff? And because I'm getting old, and am scared by change?

dave said...

Here's one for all y'all: MMJ doing James Brown's Cold Sweat. This is bringing me around on the funk stuff in particular, and now I'm REALLY psyched for the show in Philly in September:

http://youaintnopicasso.com/mp3/mmjroo/22%20Cold%20Sweat%20%5B6.14.08%5D.mp3

Ropeadope has links to others:
http://www.ropeadope.com/