My Morning Jacket

MMJ's fourth LP finds them working with wizard producer John Leckie (Stone Roses, George Harrison, Radiohead, Pink Floyd). They transcend Americana and aim toward the stratosphere. Songs shimmer and glide as Jim James's falsetto stretches heavenward. Let this album work its warm magic on you. Listen repeatedly.

America is a lot closer to getting its own Radiohead, and it isn't Wilco. My Morning Jacket,
from Louisville, Kentucky, have been on the road to their OK Computer for a while; imagine
"My Iron Lung" soaked in sour mash and you're pretty close to the massed-guitar seizures
on 2003's It Still Moves. The band still has too much bluegrass in its blood and Lynyrd
Skynyrd in the riffing here -- the jamming elbowroom of "Lay Low" and the plung... More >

Mindlessly arresting pop of moderately original flavor ("It Beats for You," "Off the Record"). (Grade - **)