My Morning Jacket - 'Z' (RCA) Released 17/10/05

 

'It Still Moves', announced the title of My Morning Jacket's 2003 major label debut, and the Louisville, Kentucky five-piece remain determined to push things forward. On their fourth album 'Z' My Morning Jacket very rarely sound like anything you've heard before - including their previous output.

Initially some of the new reference points leave this listener dumbfounded. Whatever you expected My Morning Jacket to be capable of, that almost certainly did not include joining the ska revival. Yet this is what they're up to on 'Off The Record', although the likes of the Ordinary Boys might struggle the match the track's hypnotic space-rock coda. The righteously ramshackle racket of 'What A Wonderful Man', meanwhile, is the unlikely sound of the band getting with the garage rock revolution. It rocks like a bastard.

Allow it while to sink in, and 'Z' emerges the exciting sound of a band discovering their full creative potential. 'Wordless Chorus' sets the experimental mood. The slinky funk groove at the song's foundation is a dramatic departure from the band's trademark southern rock chug, but the real surprise is hearing Jim James's vocals in the nude, shorn of their usual thick reverb coating. ‘It Beats for You’ is even more superlative-exhausting. Powered by frenetic bursts of drumming and simplest of acoustic guitar figures, this might just be the enormous yet intimate sound Coldplay and their bland-out ilk have been striving for - a pulsating, breathtaking track equally fit for plucking heartstrings and filling every inch of an enormodome.

Elsewhere, 'Anytime' is the kind of an infectious good-time rock gallop that should spread My Morning Jacket's gospel far beyond their core congregation, while the raw riffage of 'Lay Low' and 'Dondante', a majestic, epic eulogy, offer solace to fans puzzled by the new sense of sonic adventurism by proving that MMJ hasn't kicked those much-loved jams out entirely. A spot of soothing calm comes courtesy of 'Knot Comes Loose', an achingly beautiful summit of pedal-steel powered country-folk and swaying tropicalia rhythms.      
     
"We are the innovators, they are the imitators," declares Jim James on 'Wordless Chorus'. A bold statement, but 'Z' proves that the man is spot on. Named after the final letter in the alphabet, 'Z', fittingly, is the last word in exhilarating rock 'n' roll invention.