My Morning Jacket

My Morning Jacket take the high lonesome howl of American music and run, not to the hills, but into outer space. Echoing with reverb, the group makes a heavy racket that sounds like Neil Young's finest days broadcast through a megaphone. Songs like "Golden" and "Mahgeetah" exemplify this group's cosmic folk intentions.

Inside the oceanic reverb that soaks every twang and sigh on It Still Moves, the third album
by the Louisville, Kentucky, quintet My Morning Jacket, is a first-class acid-country
Radiohead swimming slowly to the surface. The group's lack of hurry can be exasperating;
some songs seem to take days to hit chorus pay dirt (the swollen-pain refrain in the Day-Glo
crawl "Master Plan") and guitar-jam daylight (the midsection of "Run Thru"). But J... More >

It's touching to watch the latest indie-rock generation flail around in search of a form, spouting sincerely all the while. But it's also depressing. Like the emo guys, Louisville's Neil-ish Jim James has the advantage of normal feelings and ambition--he's not content to remain subcultural. He claims his Dave Matthews-sponsored major-label debut was his chance to make a true band record, and I guess his boys are trickier than Crazy Horse, just not in any way you haven't heard before. Then there's his filtered drawl, his straitened tune sense, his lyrics you feel cheated straining for, his 12 songs in 72 minutes. For what? For the horrible Memphis Horns coda of "Easy Morning Rebel," plodding on funklessly for two minutes after the vocal has gone the way of all reverb? (Grade - C)