Demob Happy

Too long but It Still Moves me

8.5/10

The Louisville, Kentucky band’s third full-length is a whopping 75-minute set recorded in a grain silo and positively swimming in reverb. By eschewing modern recording techniques altogether they were taking a big risk on ‘It Still Moves‘, their first for a major label, but is with the swagger of a hard-touring band that they silence the doubters. For ‘It Still Moves‘ is an epic take on classic Americana, an unashamed poem to the redemtive power of the guitar solo, sometimes affording some extraordinarily satisfying rocking out. But there are also the swooning ballads in Jim James’ heartbreaking falsetto which recalls an alt-country Thom Yorke.

Be it rock and roll or ‘twangcore’, My Morning Jacket are not simply fetishising musical moods that probably pre-date the band members’ birth, for in Jim James they have a songwriter with exceptional gifts. The likes of ‘Golden’, ‘Just One Thing’ and ‘Steam Engine’ could grace an classic American rock record, and deserve to be granted the same status. Shades of country, folk, rock - and on ‘Mahgeeta’, Brian Wilson’s wide-eyed psychedelic pop - all bubble up in It Still Moves‘ sonic stew. The humid Kentucky air is almost palpable in the reverb-thick ambience on the record, untampered by post-production trickery in the way that marks their subsequent album ‘Z‘ as a departure. The recording quality hampers the record at the times (’Dancefloor’) the band try to embrace Stax soul where the honking brass sounds wrong in less polished recording conditions. On a couple of tracks like this it’s as if we’re listening to a concert as opposed to a studio album, and in a way we are.

It is the widescreen emotionalism of the ‘I Will Sing You Songs’ and ‘One In The Same’ that disarm the listener most, the plaintitive singing pitched somewhere between Neil Young, Wayne Coyne and the aforementioned Radiohead frontman. The former of these two songs does outstay its welcome somewhat, clocking in at over eight minutes and including a dubby, prog-rock finale that suggests a place for Pink Floyd somewhere in James’s record collection. The excessive song lengths make ‘It Still Moves‘ a bit heavy for one sitting, and a little editing might have taken this to another level. It’s never a dull listen though, with the likes of ‘Run Thru’ providing all the guiltily pleasurable guitar solos you could ever want. Another near-classic from one of the great modern bands.