My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
Featured Album
MMJ sing the body ecstatic.
The two tracks that bookend My Morning Jacket's fifth album attest to that centuries-old Christian body/soul divide that sits at the root of good church folk like Jim James and his cohorts. On the one hand, there's “Evil Urges,” the other, “Good Intentions,” and MMJ know as well as anybody that hell is paved with both of them — meaning the middle path is best. If anything, My Morning Jacket strike a precarious balance on Evil Urges, being still familiar to longtime fans while also reaching for extremes in their sound.
The opening title track swoops in like something beamed down from Radiohead's OK Computer, anthemic guitars amid spacy keyboard washes, as the conflicted James realizes that “It ain't evil, baby, if it ain't hurting anybody.” Much like another Kentuckian, Will Oldham, James couples his choirboy exterior with the animal desires that lurk beneath, mining the fertile fold where the two meet. Or, simply put, James finally digs that the closest one can get to heaven is through some fine fucking. He fantasizes about a “Librarian” hiding “the beauty the Good Lord put there” and aims to help her to find that heaven within. And, with an orgasmic yowl, he looses heaps of sexual frustration on the sublime disco(!) workout “Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Pt. 2.”
Such lower-half excursions aren't always divine though; “Highly Suspicious” will make-or-break Urges for a lot of fans. It's an odd amalgam of canned '80s keytar, complete with a non-sequitur about “peanut butter pudding surprise” and bolstered by James's highest falsetto and most robo-baritone. If anything, it sounds like the band's attempt to do Brazilian funk carioca, complete with “Wild Thing” guitar lick. Thankfully, they just as easily swoop back into the familiar soft-rock beatitude of “Thank You Too!” and the demur keen of “Sec Walkin.'” Here, James gauges his every step carefully, exulting in earthly delights around him. Yet all is not well, as he also notes the “demon eyes are watching everywhere.” And so the dark and light forces continue their push and pull.
