My Morning Jacket: Of brilliance, genre-busting and Badu
by Preston Jones
pjones@star-telegram.com
DALLAS -- A recent article in the New York Times asked the question: Will popular video games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band save rock 'n' roll?
For a generation of fans currently in grade school, sure, but as for the here and now, only bands like My Morning Jacket have any hope of saving a genre hopelessly bogged down by such heavy-rotation boilerplate as Daughtry and Hinder. Sorry kids, that's not rock -- that's posturing with an electric guitar and fooling many millions of fans.
Saturday night's epic, three-hour set at the Palladium Ballroom vividly illustrated the necessity of frontman Jim James and his flamboyant, ferociously engaging brand of performance; James -- who never met a bizarrely theatrical gimmick he didn't like; seriously, what's up with the cape? -- laid the foundation early on with his gleaming falsetto (sharp enough to cut titanium) and thick slabs of thunderous riffs, rendering tracks like Off the Record and What a Wonderful Man as delightfully explosive bursts of melodic release.
Evil Urges, the Kentucky-based quintet's latest album, is an expansive pastiche of sounds -- from stanky R&B to sleek electro-thump -- and so vibrant are these forays into uncharted waters, the band is only too happy to air nearly all of them out live (only the oddly sensual Librarian didn't make an appearance). But most of the Evil Urges tracks -- Touch Me I'm Going to Scream (parts one and two), the soaring I'm Amazed and the absolutely scorching Aluminum Park -- don't feel too far afield from the rest of MMJ's dynamic catalog.
Capable of supple ballads (the oblique Kurt Cobain tribute Bermuda Highway still glitters) and full-throated, strobe-lit freakouts (show closer One Big Holiday nearly tore the roof off), My Morning Jacket's versatility is both its strength and its Achilles heel. In doing so many things well, it becomes a bit tricky to place them on a shelf next to Three Doors Down or Nickelback -- this is rock music? -- but when you stop trying to shoehorn James and company into strict categories, the brilliance becomes all too apparent. This is a band whose time has come.
There's at least one North Texan who agrees: Erykah Badu, who joined the Jacket for an encore version of Tyrone, one of Badu's signature songs and a track that MMJ frequently covers. Badu (who sat off to the right side of the stage for the entire performance, even snapping a few photos for posterity -- see below) brought the house down, trading verses with James and stomping around onstage.
Preston Jones is the Star-Telegram pop music critic, 817-390-7713






