Thursday, June 5, 2008 | midnight
It’s difficult to think of a band with a fanbase more diverse than that of My Morning Jacket. The Louisvillian rockers are beloved by classic rockers pining for a revival of thundering mid-’70s Crazy Horse. They’re favorites of jam-banders, who dig the live guitar interplay between Jim James and Carl Broemel. And they’re darlings of the indie community, consistently earning high marks from Pitchfork and the like by getting more experimental than bearded Southern boys really have a right to.
It’s doubtful all those factions will continue embracing MMJ upon hearing Evil Urges, a severely flawed album that could halt the group’s slow march to rock immortality dead in its tracks. Apologists can laud it as “gutsy”—as some folks tried with Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky—all they want, but don’t believe it. Like that 2007 atrocity, Urges sounds like the work of a castrated crew of once-potent musicians, reaching for musical maturity rather than going for what’s actually in their hearts.
The first two-thirds plays like a half-baked homage to bygone mediocrity: “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream (Part 1)” feels like a bad knockoff of a bad Lindsey Buckingham tune; “Highly Suspicious” comes off as lame white-boy soul-funk; soft-rock twosome “Thank You Too” and “Sec Walkin’” arrives at the corner of Seals & Crofts and Loggins & Messina. Ugh.
Almost accidentally, a few tracks—“I’m Amazed,” “Aluminum Park” and “Remnants”—raise a little racket, but nothing on the level of timeless wonder “One Big Holiday.” And besides, two of the three arrive near the disc’s finish, by which time most of the goodwill My Morning Jacket has built up over the years will surely have run out.
The bottom line: *1/2
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