On My Morning Jacket’s sixth LP, Circuital, Jim James and crew deliver a record that’s tighter than their previous releases. But while there are fewer tracks and shorter jam-outs than usual, they’re still all over the map. You’ll hear plenty of bouncy, almost reggae keys; slow, mellow steel guitar; blaring horns; girl choirs; and the obligatory reverb and falsetto. Most importantly, you’ll hear a band that never gets old continue to evolve with superb style, form and exploration.
Sounds Like:
My Morning Jacket have arrived right where they started — honest and edgy as ever
Like the album’s cover art, its opening track, “Victory Dance,” was inspired by James’ recent Lasik eye surgery. Your ears are immediately jolted by his falsetto voice and a trumpet blaring “Do-da-lay do-da-lay do-da-lay do-da-lay” in unison. It’s no surprise that he begins the song (and album) with a such an odd duet, as one of James’ favorite sandboxes to play in is that weird space between sincere and silly. He seems to be completely tongue in cheek at the outset with that Tenacious D-ish opener, bouncy keyboards and high hats that give the track its groovy feel, only to build on a deeper meaning with philosophical questions, waning guitar licks and crashing cymbals.
Circuital’s title track is another standout, this time more for the band as a whole. It begins with a choir holding out one note and quickly fading, then a simply plucked guitar and James’ signature vocal stylings. “Spinning out, gracefully / Going nowhere, quickly” he croons. Soon there are ethereal tones rising up in the background, followed by a heavily strummed acoustic riff. Suddenly bassist Two-Tone Tommy, lead guitarist Carl Broemel and drummer Patrick Hallahan crash their way into the circle of sounds, and things get really rockin’. Later, keyboardist Bo Koster’s asending-and-descending piano hook adds some playfullness, until lead guitarist Carl Broemel nibbles at the neck of his guitar before chomping right through it. Then true to circuitous form, the band drops out until its just James’ voice, those atmospheric tones and that bouncy, plucked guitar fading out. Somehow My Morning Jacket can deliver an over-seven-minute rocker so gracefully that it never drags, just eloquently flows and ebbs.
Key Tracks:
Victory Dance, Circuital, Outta My System, Holdin On To Black Metal, Movin Away
What follows are three simpler tracks. “The Day Is Coming” has poppy backup vocals, a classic-but-nice melody ending each verse, relentlessly jingling bells, and a generally ominous feel that suits the mood perfectly. “Wonderful (The Way I Feel)” is a stripped-down ballad about how awesome it feels to take a step back and look at how far you’ve come every now and again. “It matters to me / Took a long time to get here / If it would have been easy / I would not have cared” James reminisces. There’s a nice touch of barely there steel guitar and backing vocals. Light drums come in for the last two verses, giving it the subtlest of airy, country jam feels. “Outta My System” take a justified view of youthful experimentation. “I’m glad I did it all then, I know what I ain’t missin’ / Glad I went and got it all outta my system” James wails over fuzzed-out guitar, waning steel guitar and slow-pounded drums. According to Rolling Stone, “Wonderful (The Way I Feel)” and “Outta My System” were written for a Muppets project that never saw the light of day. Your loss, Sesame Street.
Best Lyric:
“I can learn from way back when / And still live right now” - “Wonderful (The Way I Feel)”
Then comes a cover of Yes’ “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” Wait a minute… nope… it’s just the very similar bass line of “Holdin On To Black Metal.” If the “Oh oh ohs” hadn’t come in so quickly, I would have been totally fooled. Despite the similarity, this track is a jam. Horn bursts, all-falsetto lyrics, choirs of girls and kids, wah-wah guitars and a killer breakdown make it all-over-the-place awesome. And the story of a black-metalhead who just can’t let go of the music of his youth adds another crazy element to the song. It’s a cautionary tale about not getting so deep into Satanic ideology that you can’t grow out of it as you age. I can empathize with James here — though I never got into black metal, I thought Rammstein and Papa Roach were the shit back in the day. But the themes of death, destruction, anger and hate just couldn’t retain my interest after high school. Just like James sings, “It’s a darkness you can’t deny / But it don’t belong in a grown up mind.”
Music video for “Circuital”
Blaring guitar and rock drums open up “First Light,” on which James stretches his non-falsetto voice to the limits and a soulful, horn-infused rockout brings things to a very nice close. “You Wanna Freak Out” reminds us that we can’t hide our emotions forever, with poppy verses, keyboard, steel guitar and a fittingly fuzzed-to-the-max guitar solo drives the song’s message home. “Slow Slow Tune” is a bluesy, slow jam (no shit, right?) that’s an ode to one’s unborn children. The band breaks it down to just James’ soft, falsetto, until piercing guitar slices through the silence like fatherly advice through a child’s argument.
Finally, “Movin’ Away” closes things out with piano chords, high hats and snare that give the song a light carnival feel. It’s a goodbye dirge about how when two separated people fall in love, one feels the urge to move nearer to the other. “Possessed by your love / Under the influence / And though there’s a new life line / I won’t forget the one I left behind” James sings before a longing steel guitar solo. At the end, high keys wander around while low keys draw them nearer to middle octaves, making for a nice melodic analogy of the song’s theme. The mood is sad but glad, reminiscent but looking forward. And it’s that future-oriented outlook that brings us right back to where we started with “Victory Dance.”
Overall Rating:
On the short documentary that accompanies Circuital, lead singer and visionary Jim James explains the title and title track. “I feel like this record and this song are very circular. Perhaps, you could say, in contrast to the triangle waveforms of our last record. This record had more circular waveforms.” More being the operative word. See, the band and its frontman have always been too varied to ever release a typically “circuital” album. They’re never going to produce a perfect circle of a record, where the order and feel of each song complement each other in a flawless, resolved manner. But that is precisely the perfection of My Morning Jacket — they take you down a winding path through rivers of reverb, forests of falsetto and mountains of modern rock, only to leave you wondering how you’re still listening to the same band, whether it’s ten tracks or six albums later.
