The intimate 1999 debut from these countrified Southern rockers is perfect for the wee hours. Before they became an arena-filling live powerhouse, My Morning Jacket were a countrified lo-fi outfit from Louisville whose miniscule recording budget went to whatever implement might give them a bit more reverb. Like the songwriters in the Band, MMJ leader Jim James knows his old-time rock, country, blues and folk; also like the songwriters in the Band, he chooses to honor classic songs by writing new ones that could fit alongside them. So while the sound quality of My Morning Jacket's 1999 debut is crude and primitive by the standards of their later work, the strength of the material easily carries the day. And for anyone who has ever been drawn to a certain strain of indie music specifically for its roughhewn, handmade quality, well,
The Tennessee Fire has the ring of a stone classic.
The best songs here sound eerily familiar, like maybe you heard them crackling through the dashboard during some long drive when you couldn't quite catch the signal. "They Ran," a waltz that drifts in like the Flamingos performing "I Only Have Eyes For You" at the Grand Ole Opry with
Lee Hazlewood running sound, positively
bleeds lost highway ambiance and serves as a tribute to the transformative power of AM radio. "Evelyn Is Not Real," a loping mid-tempo weeper, is ghostly and ethereal but also brimming with confidence, the sound of a band fully aware of its power. A number of songs feature James virtually alone. Some of these, like "Nashville to Kentucky" and "Butch Cassidy," find him layering his voice into echoing towers of harmony that reference country music's mid-century golden age; others, like "If All Else Fails," are stark and acoustic but no less effective. An often muted and intimate album perfect for the wee hours,
The Tennessee Fire proves that early My Morning Jacket had it from the get-go.