Concert in your area for Indie & Alt, Rock, Country, and Folk & Blues.
Two original members remain in My Morning Jacket - frontman Jim James, and bass player Tom Blankenship. Over the course of their sixteen year career to date, the band have proven themselves to be one of the most versatile and stylistically diverse rock groups on the planet, with their unique style of psychedelic rock usually punctuated by a flurry of other influences; country, folk and even the blues have seeped into their sound as time has gone on. They’ve released six records to date; their second, ‘At Dawn’, was released in April of 2001, and marked the point at which they began to really nail down the fundamentals of their sound - tracks like ‘Death Is the Easy Way’ and ‘Just Because I Do’ laid down the blueprint for future albums.
‘It Still Moves’, released in September 2003, marked their real critical breakthrough, with ‘Run Thru’ being ranked as one of Rolling Stone’s ‘100 Greatest Guitar Songs’. They expanded their burgeoning fanbase in October 2005 with the considerably more polished ‘Z’, and ‘Evil Urges’, from June 2008, cemented their place as one of the premier indie rock bands in America. They received rapturous reviews for their latest LP, ‘Circuital’, in 2011; since then, the individual members have taken some time away from the band to focus on other projects, with James releasing a solo album in 2013.
My Morning Jacket, or MMJ, are Nashville's finest psychedelic progressive jam rock group. There are a whole lot of other genre descriptors that could be thrown in there as well, but we don't have all day! Simply put: from their debut LP "The Tennessee Fire" to 2011's "Circuital," My Morning Jacket have an impressive body of work. Transforming into a more heavily psychedelic outfit with more reliance on experimental electronics in the past few years, bandleader Jim James has never let the group stagnate. His own solo albums, which are an outlet for softer, more personal songs, echo deeply the whole band's sound.
MMJ is host every year to a massive music retreat for die-hard fans, called One Big Holiday. It's a dream of mine to someday attend, but for now I'm content with having seen them in December of 2012. And what a show it was! Starting out with the most tremendous stage entrance I've ever seen, the theatrics the band is famous for immediately captured the audience, and never let them go. Starting out with the ironically named "Victory Dance," the massive 22-song, 2-set show was a thoroughly evangelizing experience through and through. My favourite song, "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, Pt. 2" was the closer before the encore, and the way it was delivered with James dancing around the stage, electronics dangling from his neck, frantically pushing buttons like a man trying to diffuse a bomb, was absolutely astonishing. The electricity of the crowd was palpable, and the shared hypnotic state was as mesmerizing as anything else I have been a part of.
Should you see MMJ if you get the chance? Hell yes. Even as a broke college student, I'd pay twice the money again for tickets. 10/10.