My Morning Jacket

From page 81 of Classic Rock Magazine December 2003



Cover of December 2003 issue.
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‘It Still Moves’ (RCA) My Morning Jacket, from Louisville, Kentucky, have an expansive, Technicolor sound that crackles with youthful vim.

They also like to drench their songs in a cavernous reverb that makes frontman Jim James sound like a particularly musical potholer.

This is the band’s third album, and their first for RCA. The shift to a major label and the addition of keyboardist Danny Cash seem part and parcel of a growing confidence, the group’s otherworldly-sounding songs recalling Neil Young, Big Star, and even early Orange Juice (opener ‘Mahgeetah’).

Broadly speaking, it’s an Americana thing, but with coy nods to dub reggae and Stax-like R&B (the crescendo of ‘Dancefloors’) My Morning Jacket like to keep the listener guessing. What is unmistakable, however, is the band’s ability to tap into a majestic wistfulness, which on this record is at it most intoxicating on the slow-burning stand- out ‘I Will Sing You Songs.’ Apparently the band rehearse on a rural farm. Listening to the bountiful harvest on this album, that makes perfect sense. Ambitious as Mercury Rev’s ‘Deserter Songs’, ‘It Still Moves’ is a soul-searching, star-gazing gem.

★★★★ ★

James Halbert

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