My Morning Jacket’s Jim James to Release George Harrison Covers EP [Billboard]
Highline Ballroom Curate Concerts at The Beach on Governor’s Island [Brooklyn Vegan]
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Snoop Dogg, Talib Kweli, Soulja Boy, and Buzz Aldrin?! Collaborate on Single?!…Uhh?! [Spin]
The Roots Debut First Single From Upcoming How I Got Over Tonight on Jimmy Fallon [Pitchfork]
Pavement Singer/Guitarist Scott Kannberg to Release First Solo Album The Real Feel as Pavement Pseudonym “Spiral Stairs” [Matablog]
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compiled by Max Sebela
Northside Festival Badge Holders Turned Away at Shea’s Stadium [Brooklyn Vegan]
Ballet Troupes to Perform to Music of Arcade Fire and Spoon [NME]
Raekwon, Method Man, and Ghostface Killah Re-Bring Da Ruckus on “New Wu” [Gorilla vs. Bear]
Weezer, Christina Aguilera, and the Eagles Get Their Own Radio Stations [Idolator]
Bright Eyes, My Morning Jacket, and M. Ward Create Monsters of Folk [NME]
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compiled by Max Sebela
September 19, 2008
Record Review: The Tennessee Fire
Hidden Gem:
My Morning Jacket
The Tennessee Fire
1999 | Darla Records
It’s still hard to write or speak about My Morning Jacket at length without mentioning reverb. Lead vocalist Jim James has made a living drenching his unique, vowel-elongating, southern-drawl delivery (“again” becomes “ahh-gee-uhhn”) with buckets of reverb, creating a signature sound that many have since copied. But gradually over the band’s discography, the catcalls of one-trick pony have been erased if not totally forgotten. Evil Urges—MMJ’s fifth and latest release—is clearly their most eclectic.
But James’ echo-ey caw found its origin on the bands first LP, released in 1999. The Tennessee Fire, thoroughly and transparently influenced by Neil Young’s work in the early 70s, is an album built upon warm, mostly acoustic melodies and, more prominently, James’s melancholic howl. Even if you ignore the mentions of going “down to the pier after dark,” cocaine smiles and kicking heads in, you still get the creeps just from having James’ howl brush over you like a stiff breeze on a dead tree. The songs are better than average but the voice is what takes the album over the top, making listening to The Tennessee Fire downright emotionally taxing.
Sometimes it doesn’t sound so much like reverb as it does MMJ’s efforts bouncing off the walls of a cheap recording space. In “War Begun,” a beautiful slow-burner with cryptic lyrics about soul snatching and a race of robots, James whines as if the microphone is at the kitchen table and he’s singing from the front porch. But he delivers it with such timidity and charm that by the time his voice travels to you through the screen door and down the hall, it just about melts your heart.
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