My Morning Jacket: "Evil Urges"

[TotallyEnormousExtinctDinosaur]

I'm posting this for you Alex!

My Morning Jacket
As yet untitled, due summer

What's the Deal: The Kentucky rock cowboys started writing their fifth studio album on a Colorado mountaintop before moving to an undisclosed, more cosmopolitan location. "Our normal process is to be out in the middle of the country, so we're trying to f**k it up as much as we can," singer-songwriter Jim James says.

Why It's Better Than Their Last One: James promises more dance, soul and calypso touched. He's also been listening to a lot of gospel. "When you hear people who believe in God, it's powerful," James says.

Modest Goal for 2008: "We want to unite the human race and make the world a better place," James says.

[That Skipping Rope.]

I know! I'm so f**king excited. I was pissed they didn't do their Thanksgiving show like last year, but I imagine I'll be seeing them somewhere this summer. They put on the best live show. They killed it at Lollapalooza.

One of my favorite bands of all time.

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Evil Urges is out June 10th.

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01 Evil Urges
02 Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Part 1
03 Highly Suspicious
04 I'm Amazed
05 Thank You Too
06 Sec Walkin'
07 Two Halves
08 Librarian
09 Look at You
10 Aluminum Park
11 Remnants
12 Smokin From Shootin
13 Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Part 2
14 Good Intentions

[That Skipping Rope.]

This is going to be AMAZING. They debuted over half the album in live shows in the past two weeks. They're f**king incredible. I cannot wait until I can experience their live show next.

[backintime]

Chris Moyles?

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backintime said:

Chris Moyles?

Woah. I see that. And Lou Pearlman.

[That Skipping Rope.]

My Morning Jacket's Jim James Urges Fans To Come Along On Upcoming Album's Wild Ride
Evil Urges is surely going to blow minds. The question is, though, for better or for worse?

Due June 10 on ATO Records, Urges is the fifth album from the ever-evolving Louisville, Kentucky, act My Morning Jacket, and it finds them continuing down the same path they started on with their critically acclaimed 2005 record, Z.

"I feel like Z is the perfect bridge from what we were gradually doing before — and Z to [Evil Urges] is the perfect bridge between everything. ... On the first listen, there's a lot of variety in a lot of different places, but I think after repeated listens, hopefully the listener would understand the similarities more than the differences," frontman Jim James told MTV News.

And he's not kidding when he talks about the "variety" found on this record.

The first three tracks will immediately stun fans of MMJ with heavy funk beats and synths galore. The title track and "Highly Suspicious" also find James singing in his rarely heard super-high falsetto, all too reminiscent of Prince or the Bee Gees. It's jarring stuff, but like everything else on the record, it makes sense in the band's evolution and really adds a terrific new element to its repertoire.

After the opening tracks, the band enters "more familiar territory," as James put it, for the next good portion of the record. The falsetto, synths and big beats are suddenly replaced by James' typical (read: beautiful) crooning, steel-pedal guitar and plenty of country all around, while the band slowly and methodically mellows things out.

"I'm Amazed" is a classic MMJ Southern-rock guitar jam with plenty of guitar/piano interplay, while "Librarian" is a track as straightforward as they come, finding James in stripped-down singer/songwriter form, narrating and professing his secret love for the "sweetest little bookworm hidden underneath ... the sexiest librarian."

But the mellow middle of the record stands in sharp contrast to those first few tracks, which quickly begin to feel out of place as the record trudges on. That is until the end few rockers and the disco-y number "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream (Part 2)" take us full circle, kicking things back into the stratosphere and making even the middle of the record itself seem out of place.

Of the tracks, James said, "There's things that run through them. ... Even though a song doesn't necessarily sound the same, there's different themes and chord structures that pop up in a lot of them that you don't necessarily hear at first listen ... but as you listen to it more, you realize the interconnectedness within all the variety and different directions."

Recording in New York also changed the overall direction of the music, James said. "We kind of deliberately wanted to make it different from our previous environments, where it was more loose and stretched-out. We wanted the feeling of being under this thing to add a precision to it. ... I do feel like it was a hard record to make — the hardest record we've ever made. We did have a lot of fun in the conceiving of it, but in the making of it, it was work."

"We like to ask a lot, but we don't ask too much. I think we expect that from the listener," multi-instrumentalist Carl Broemel says of the record.

Evil Urges is an album that isn't easily digestible — even for the seasoned My Morning Jacket fan. And while much of the record is enjoyable if you compartmentalize it, as a whole it may take some getting used to.

www.mtv.com/news/articles/1584403/20080328/my_morning_jacket.jhtml

[TotallyEnormousExtinctDinosaur]

My Morning Jacket
Evil Urges 6/10


Evil Urges begins with three of the wildest songs of MMJ's career — including "Highly Suspicious," which combines lyrics about a "peanut-butter-pudding surprise" with a bastardized Eighties funk beat and Prince-style falsetto vocals from frontman Jim James. But other songs are far more accessible, from the Band-meets-the-Who glories of "I'm Amazed" to the old-fashioned country ballad "Sec Walkin" and the fierce arena rock of "Aluminum Park." "I've gotten tired of normal rock & roll sounds," says James. "But I like that there's a song like 'I'm Amazed' where anybody who's seen us live over the years can get into it."

[That Skipping Rope.]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Also...



MAYJA!

[RedDragon]

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LEAKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GAH GAH GAH

[backintime]

Apr 20, 2008 18:55:26 GMT -5 That Skipping Rope. said:

GAH GAH GAH

You're thinking of Spoon

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This is probably my least favorite album by them, but I still absolutely love it. They're an incredible band. I just think this album needs time.

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They're on Saturday Night Live tonight.

[That Skipping Rope.]

So, this is getting nice promo on Proboards. lol

Also, Entertainment Weekly gave this an A:

R&B grooves, Prince-worthy vocal seduction, robotic verses cribbed from an old house-music mix — these strange noises and more can be heard within the first three tracks of Evil Urges, My Morning Jacket's fifth offering. ''It ain't evil if it ain't hurting anybody,'' sings frontman-songwriter Jim James on the title track — and over the course of 13 lyrical landscapes, he crushes on librarians, begs to be touched, then bemoans the harm he's done. The cumulative result is an exhilarating, bone-deep experience — a true album, built for sustained listening. Further freeing themselves from the Southern-rock box to which critics confined them, MMJ remain on the trail they blazed with 2005's eclectic Z. As they rocket into the distance with little concern for genre, their only goal appears to be transporting us all with the power of freakin' great songs.

A quick reassurance to devoted fans: The band's trademark sunset warmth still abides amid these sonic explorations. It's in the harmonies of ''Thank You Too!,'' in the vibe borrowed from James' Monsters of Folk buddy M. Ward on the steady ''Sec Walkin,'' in the fiery yelps of ''Aluminum Park.''

''I'm Amazed,'' meanwhile, features a glistening intro — GN'R's ''Paradise City'' as interpreted by people who spend more time around trees — only to spread into a ruined reverie. ''I'm amazed at the TV stations/I'm amazed what they want me to believe,'' sings James, his remarkable voice reverb-free. ''Where is the justice?'' It's gleeful and morose at the same time, depression masked in melody.

But how to react to the urbane loneliness of ''Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Pt. 1'' or the throbbing nonsense funk of ''Highly Suspicious''? The latter is easily one of the biggest where-the-eff-did-that-come-from tracks by any established group in recent memory, and it would read as a schizophrenic break were it not so wholehearted, right down to James' rubbery cackle-turned-piercing wail.

Besides that whammy-bar bonanza, the end of Urges holds our journey's choicest payoff, as the haunting monologue of ''Smokin From Shootin'' dissolves into the album's bookend, ''Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Pt. 2.''

Beginning with a rumble, ''Pt. 2'' erupts into police sirens that, in turn, fade into the rhythmic space-ghost tinkling of an Omnichord — like a child's toy piano gone goth. ''This feeling is wonderful! Don't you ever turn it off!'' James pleads over insistent dance-floor drums, before the hypnotic refrain ends in a shriek. Then a voice in the background proves that despite all the recent sophistication, no one's forgotten their scruffy roots: ''Okay, cool,'' it says, before snapping into silence. Dude, seriously.

[duh5]

"Librarian" is fiyah! Love it.

[backintime]

Projected to sell 50k.

[That Skipping Rope.]

I'm really loving this album now. "Two Halves" is quickly becoming one of my favorite MMJ songs ever. They did a gig at my record shop on the day of the release, but I was in Spain. My best friend was front row and gave Jim a high five and got his guitar pick. He said it was an amazing show. I'm so jealous.

[duh5]

Yeah, it's definitely a solid album. If they had trimmed a few tracks, would have been even better.

[TotallyEnormousExtinctDinosaur]

I've been hearing "Thank You Too" a lot on the Triple A station. I'm really liking it, but part of the chorus melody reminds me of "I Wanna f**k You" by Akon like a lot.

[That Skipping Rope.]

Ahh, that's my favorite song off the album.