My Morning Jacket’s perfect live album
THE CD: “Okonokos” (ATO/RCA)
THE PERFORMER: My Morning Jacket
WEBSITE: Click here.
SUGGESTED TRACKS: “Lay Low,” “Run Thru,” “I Think I’m Going to Hell,” “Dancefloors,” “Dondante,” “Gideon”
YOU’LL LIKE IT IF…: you like it clean and vigorous.
Louisville madmen My Morning Jacket cobble together the finest live album this side of the “MTV Unplugged” series with their two-disc live album “Okonokos.” And they pull it off without sacrificing a single bar of their heavily electric, operatic style.
The band’s signature pageantry seems destined for failure when put to the often grainy and distorted medium of live recordings. Nirvana, for instance, sounded grainy and distorted in the studio yet the band’s 1996 live album “From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah” sounded awful. (In fairness, their “Unplugged” album was among the finest of the MTV series).
My Morning Jacket jeers live-album limitations as they howl and scream through 21 songs as crisp and clear as anything that comes from a sound-proof booth. Stir in the adrenaline speedball of the band and crowd’s energy as captured in the recording and you have an album that should be a controlled substance.
Back-to-back renditions of MMJ’s wailing epics “Dondante” and “Run Thru” shiver up the spine and back again. Off-beat numbers such as “Wordless Chorus” and “It Beats 4 U” — dreamy, organ-heavy rumblers from last year’s more experimental album “Z” — pack every ounce of their original aural peyote.
Singer Jim James belts out his long-note, high pitched croon to a T. Except for a few cracked and tired moments — “What a Wonderful Man” could have been scrapped — James’ ghostly soul wail dishes the same tingling energy here as it does in the studio.
“Okonokos” draws from all four studio albums. It favors “Z” and its predecessor “It Still Moves,” but also features obscure tracks such as “O is the One That is Real” from the EP “Sweatbees.”
If MMJ has never graced your stereo, take this time to get acquainted. You might not ever find so many of their songs in one grand place again.
– by Morgan Kelly
