My Morning Jacket

The well-mannered fellows we fell in love with on My Morning Jacket's early efforts probably don't mix with the would-be rawkers who appear on Evil Urges. Although he shares the mic for the first time in the band's history, Jim James' stratospheric falsetto even sounds foreign -- first with a Prince-ly libido on the aptly named "Highly Suspicious" and then adding to the macho, wanking two-fer of "Aluminum Park" and "Remnants." Those who miss the sleepy days should advance to "Look At You" or the nerdly horndog verse of "Librarian."

"Evil urges, baby," squeals Jim James in the title track of his band's fifth studio album. "They
be part of the human way!" A slinky funk strut delivered in Prince-like falsetto that blows
up into a proggy Southern-rock guitar duel, "Evil Urges" rallies you to "Dedicate your love to
any woman or man/No racial boundary lines, no social subdivisions" and notes that "evil" is
often in the ear of the beholder. But coming from a young band whose first thre... More >