3 December 2008 :: stirring up anger problems you never knew existed

:: Record Review

My Morning Jacket

Ch. 2: Learning (Early Recordings)
(Darla; 2004)

Rating: 75%
Combined Rating: 76%

*** I’ll take “cake-eating” as a cheeky euphemism for “cover songs,” but the sentiment is a bit more confessional than Jim James’s should-be legendary scribbling seems to admit. The whole of Darla’s MMJ “Early Recordings” project flirts sloppily with old, smelly indulgence, at first glance about as welcome as yet another live version of “I Will be There When You Die.” Yet, for fans and the uninitiated both, this is a treat: rarely does an obligatory back-logue harrowing spume with such a deliciously off-center look at a brilliant band’s origins; rarely does such a bloated move come off so humbly.

Immediately accessible, as one could expect from such an endeavor, are Learning’s covers, running the gamut from splendidly tongue-in-cheek to deadly point-on. The Pet Shop Boys’s “West End Girls” is, straight out, the worst song in this collection, close to fostering doubts about its inclusion in the first place, but the canned synths and chuckling backbeat throw a completely unexpected light on MMJ’s Lexington beginnings. “Take My Breath Away,” its irony as chubby as the nipples on Katie Beach’s unnerving and stupendous cover art, was originally included in a “Louisville is for Lovers” Valentines Day compilation.

“Dream a lil Dream” and Erykah Badu’s “Tyrone” take different routes from the album’s earlier covers, James and Co. tackling each for the anticipation, disappointment, and subtle despair that Americana has proven these pop standards to be. “Tyrone,” recorded live, much like the popular version of the original, scrapes the echo from My Morning Jacket’s concert hall bar-drawl bombast and reveals the sultry flavor “we’ve” always known their arrangements to have (which “we” use to justify having s-e-x to '99s The Tennessee Fire). “Dream,” just one of many solo acoustic moments on any Jacket release, is characteristically startling, a simple sepia pace sublimated by James’s massive pipes. Oh, madonn’!, that voice!

The demos of “Just one Thing” from It Still Moves (2003) and “Death is the Easy Way” from At Dawn (2001) do little for those that have already heard the album versions, but they still provide a clear example of the maturity and talent of the band’s sound in its infancy. “Just One Thing,” especially---here stripped of its sparse strings and intrusive background vocals---, bridges the often hilarious distance between the good ole days and now, resulting in a version as delicious as the original. Similarly, the live takes of “Bermuda H[igh]w[a]y” and “I Will Be There When You Die” are exceptionally spare, but James, sans reverb, is crystal and that much more consuming.

This leaves us with the unreleased “new” songs and B-sides, as far away from tried and true MMJ as Jim James’s split ends are from his scalp. “Tonite I Want to Celebrate w/ You,” originally sported in the European EP, Heartbreakin Man, is a surprising beginning to any Jacket album, a hollow acoustic clang coupled with what could be a banjo and what could be, as the liner notes so helpfully attest, “DISHES.” James’s voice is demure and soft, the song’s climax a relatively simple swirl of synthesizers, but both are exactly “what could be” the band’s later greater wall of marshy grandeur.

“Nothing 2 Me,” part of a 7” compendium to The Tennessee Fire, is swallowed by a stultifying bass beat. James and his squeaky harmonica stay pummeled, content in their euphonic suffocation, creating a dynamic haphazardly better than most anything off of They Were Wrong So We Drowned (2004). “Why Don’t U Love Me” is pure candy; “We-hhh-ll,” Beach Boys emulation aside, the group’s Lexingtonian yip drunk inside of a surfer harmony is fried caramel. “That Someone Else Was You” is another 4-track wonder of finger-tipped arpeggio and hushed vocal melody.

Unfortunately, the My Morning Jacket of undergraduate courses at the University of Kentucky is not essential while the My Morning Jacket on stage, swinging their gorgeous manes for John Kerry, is. Learning is a success, at the least, in the realm of obligatory compilations, offering a twisted and unexpected perspective on a much-heralded artist. Then, if said compilation can remind a fan of why they love said artist so frig-fraggin’ much, even better. But there’s a reason a band like My Morning Jacket can afford to put their “sound” on the line with quirky throwbacks; established and critically lauded, MMJ’s choice to now reveal their early diddlings is well-timed but inevitably a risk. The dreaded n-word looms (It rhymes with schmovelty and characterizes this sentence.).

So, despite superlatives, this is only one-half of a collection, just a piece of pieces of a great band’s greatness. Nothing here is as complete as any of their three phenomenal albums, and forever it shall be that way.

I’ll take it.

P.S. For all I know, Jim James has no split ends. I’m just jealous. Dom Sinacola :: 8 December 2004 |                

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