520 Etc.: Weekly album review
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Okonokos - My Morning Jacket
Usually a live album either sinks or soars in my book. Some artists surpass the brilliance contained in their albums with live shows, feeding heavily off of the crowd's energy and come up with something that leaves the studio albums in the dust. In other cases, musicians try and put too much into their studio releases, making it virtually impossible to recreate these songs live, thus live recordings come across as lacking and usually find their way back into the used CD bins. My Morning Jacket's newest release, Okonokos, is thankfully not one of these releases.
My first impression was "they are never going to be able to capture whatever it is they do live with this album." I was sorely mistaken. As the tracks progressed through this two-disc adventure, I found myself not able to keep my mind on anything else but the music, the same feat that happens every time I see MMJ live. It is almost like a trance in which Jim James and his merry Louisvillians grab a hold and weave their gothic, Southern tales with the magic that only they could do. James' voice rings out of a pallet of layered musical intensity witch makes you want to throw up horns and head-bang along with the band at one moment and curl up into a ball and weep the very next. This can be attributed at the root to Jim James and his phenomenal songwriting ability. But it's more than that really. The way in which he uses his voice more as a complementary instrument than a tool to hammer the lyrics into your brain is extraordinary, thus making the songs even more beautiful and mysterious.
Recorded at the famous Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, this live album covers mostly songs from the latest MMJ studio album, Z, but also visits other favorites from the vault including "Xmas Curtain", "I Will Sing You Songs", and the epic, "One Big Holiday." This release definitely has "Top 10" potential for 2006 and is definitely one of the best live albums I own. The great thing is they are just getting started and beginning to get the respect that they deserve. This makes the future look so much brighter.------Andrew Bryant