Decade Look: Part 8 - My Morning Jacket's Evil Urges

Add this to the ever growing list of albums that are reviewed as "shit" or "not worth hearing" (or as Pitchfork would tell you to "listen to Animal Collective instead") yet I find amazing. Such is music. My Morning Jacket have released good albums in the past, like the highly reviewed "At Dawn", but it wasn't until "Evil Urges" that I became truly interested. With this album, My Morning Jacket found their true identity which is something they struggled with in the past. "At Dawn" is a nice enough listen, it just sounded to me like they were trying too hard whilst "Z", their album previous to "Evil Urges", was close to attaining that sound but was just a little bit too scatterbrain. This album saw contributions from other band members on backing vocals which was perhaps the key to it all. "Highly Suspicious" is a good example, the backing vocals make the song, and it's the type of sound the band would've never achieved without those contributions. Which brings me to the crème de la crème of the album, fourth track "I'm Amazed", one of my favorite ever rock songs. A great chorus, shredding guitar solo and fantastic vocals from Jim James make it an instant classic. The following track, "Thank You Too", is one of the finer moments on the album as well as it showcases Jim James' lyrical prowess. "Smokin' From Shootin'" begins the massive ending of the album with a bang (ha!) before smoothly transitioning into the second part of "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream", an eight minute behemoth (my new word instead of "epic"). Keep an eye out for live shows as well, they are not to be missed (so I've heard). Fingers crossed that they have a new album in 2010 and then a tour. Please, let it be so.



Standout tracks: Touch Me I'm Going to Scream (Part 1 & 2), I'm Amazed, Thank You Too, Librarian, Smokin' From Shootin'