Never Mind the Hipsters, Here's "Evil Urges"

I have been waiting awhile for this album.

In the early summer months of 2006, I was introduced to My Morning Jacket by a fellow used CD store employee. Not long after hearing “Z” and “It Still Moves,” used copies of each were sitting in the backseat of my car, getting heavy rotation in my CD player on the road. (And of course, Road Rock is the best Rock) Of course, they were also getting heavy airplay on my iTunes as well, with songs like “Off The Record,” “Wordless Chorus,” “Mahgeeta,” and “One Big Holiday” launching their way up toward “Top 25 Most Played” status.

Later that summer, MMJ was scheduled to play a headlining set at the U.S. Cellular Stage at Summerfest, a ten-day 12pm-12am festival on Lake Michigan in the heart of downtown Milwaukee. I was still mostly unfamiliar with the entire body of MMJ’s work, but I still wanted to see them play that night – July 3. I figured there would be no better way to usher in the 230^th year of our nation’s existence then to take in some beer-soaked lakefront rock and roll with a few friends.

Now, many shows that I’ve been to have been involved some level of inebriation, and many of those times, the inebriation added to the experience of the show. Many people believe this type of activity to be essential to the rock show. Most of the time it’s just fun. However, no drugs or alcohol would be required to realize the majesty of My Morning Jacket live and outdoors. To this day, it is one of the five best live shows I’ve ever seen. Rock and Roll has always been my #1 drug of choice.

Of course, after the show, I couldn’t get enough MMJ, and started listening to more and more of their material. The more I listened to My Morning Jacket, the more I liked their music. They seemed like the only alternative rock band that had the emphasis properly placed on the “rock,” while incorporating major elements of the “alternative.” The band never overtly tried to be different and singer/guitarist/songwriter/producer Jim James has never made it a secret that he loves Neil Young. He also has no problem having an album cover prominently featuring a grizzly bear (It Still Moves), growing a mammoth woodsman beard and launching into extended guitar-rock jams with flying-V guitars. MMJ has never shied away from their Louisville roots and seem equally enamored with classic blues/country and bombastic guitar rock.

But the subsequent success of MMJ’s 2-disc live album, “Okonokos,” recorded on the same tour as their stop at Summerfest, propelled their popularity and genuine credibility (and I suppose, awesomeness) to new heights. The brilliance of “Z” and the nearly-religious experience of their live shows had some calling them America’s Greatest Rock Band or The World’s Best Live Band or even, America’s Answer To Radiohead.

Needless to say, My Morning Jacket’s latest effort, “Evil Urges,” (officially released on June 10, via ATO) has come with the support of some serious hype. Videos of their new songs surfaced online after a memorable performance in Austin. The late-April leak of the album pushed the hype to new levels, when it was clear that “Evil Urges” would be a step out of their normal wheelhouse.

Now, I don’t pretend to be the world’s highest authority on all things MMJ. I’ve seen them once live (I plan to go again when they visit Milwaukee this fall) and I own three of their CD’s. I have listened to most of their music in some capacity, though not all of it legally. However, I did download “Evil Urges” the minute I heard of the leak, and was extremely excited to see how this album would be received by a drastically changing music industry, with new players and fewer boundaries, and older players realigning the boundaries and rewriting the rules. MMJ seemed to be right in the thick of it all.

Increasingly popular music blog, Stereogum, was among the first to review “Evil Urges” in their hilariously titled series of what is essentially a leak review, Premature Evaluation, on April 23.

Stereogum always excels in relating the reality of album reviews, which is that it is mainly a first impression, and not a true assessment of the album as a whole. However, the Premature Evaluations do seem to garner the most discussion on these blogs, and the initial response in the review (as well as in the comments, for the most part, though there were some dissenters who yearned for the earlier sounds) seemed generally positive.

And I fucking loved it. I still can’t stop listening to it. I think “Evil Urges” is among the five best albums to be released so far in 2008. It shows a logical progression of the band. They decidedly knew they were going to change things up a bit, and I could not be happier with the change. More experimental, but more stylistically experimental while retaining their so-called southern-rock roots. The title track is one of the better opening tracks I’ve heard in recent years, the outer-space jam of “Wordless Chorus” turned up to 11 with an extra extended alt-rock jam for good measure. Delicious. “Librarian” is another immediate standout, where Jim James (who gets delightfully poetic on this album) details a potential (?) sexual encounter with a sexy librarian, and goes on tangents about human nature throughout. It’s like an intellectual wet dream, even if it is a fairly basic, bare-bones song that is simple but not the bad kind of simple. The “Touch Me I’m Going To Scream” bookends are both spectacular, inventive, progressive greatness, “Aluminum Park” and “Remnants” are both completely kickass rock songs and “I’m Amazed” simply takes off on the open road with James in both amazement and bewildered confusion at the nation they’ve crisscrossed on tour (in support of Z).

However, one song seemed to really divide people on this album, the obscure third track, “Highly Suspicious.” Now, I don’t believe that this track should be taken seriously in any capacity. It is a seriously goofy song and it is COMPLETELY out of character so it’s certain to alienate a number of fans, especially fans of their older material. In an interview with SPIN magazine, James described the song as (and I’m paraphrasing here) a conflict between a drug addict and someone (law enforcement, perhaps?) who is highly suspicious of the dubious activities (peanut butter puddin’ surprise, perhaps?) of the drug addict. The song is mostly stupid, however, it does have potential as a live song because it seems like it might be kinda fun, even though it’s kinda stupid.

But that’s really where the polarization starts, and the biggest argument against this album came on June 9 – the day before “Evil Urges” is released – from the pretentious online pseudo-revolutionaries (or we could just call them hipsters, for short) at Pitchfork Media.

With their 4.7 review of “Evil Urges,” Eric Harvey of P4K slammed MMJ, and unfavorably compared them to label-mates Dave Matthews Band, and called “Highly Suspicious,” “a loud thud ending any chance Urges had to match the group's previous records. An attempt to merge the band's penchant for live quirkiness with James' long-simmering Prince fixation, the track sounds like My Morning Jacket's version of a Phish novelty.”

With that, P4K drew a line in the sand, essentially losing their final chance at serious critical credibility, delving into hipster anti-mainstream nonsense once again. Last year, they gave a great Kings of Leon album a 5.4 and did major damage to their “indie cred” or something. They’ve killed The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Killers, and just about anybody who made a leap to the mainstream without staying in the bounds of the indie universe. It is entirely possible that Harvey and the rest of the Pitchfork staff legitimately do not like “Evil Urges,” but that’s not the point. MMJ has been on MTV, Rolling Stone magazine, and other mainstream music media outlets, and of course P4K takes issue with this, because they want indie rock to be exclusionary. They want to have good music be like a club with a bouncer checking your indie cred. “Sorry, you don’t like No Age or Fuck Buttons? Get the fuck out! Go buy yourself a Smiths record and get yourself an education!”

I’m so sick of that shit. Fuck the hipster backlash, you gotta stop keeping everyone down. It’s a sick sour vibe and it doesn’t help anyone and is no longer part of the solution. It is no longer a challenge to the rest of the music universe (to put it in hip-hop terms) to step their game up.

So now that MMJ is big business (and I think they knew this while writing and recording EU), they served up some highly suspicious bait for the rabid hipster hate machine, and Pitchfork and the pretentious hipster universe clamped down hard. They know what you want, you want the better of two halves.

The hipsters would have crucified Jesus too, but not for the same reasons as anyone else. They would have said “You know, I really liked his early stuff, but everything after the Sermon on the Mount was just trash, totally trying way to hard to make it big.” Nothing could be more idiotic.

So as they often do, Pitchfork missed the point in their “Evil Urges” review. In a way, “Evil Urges” is MMJ’s “Kid A,” a critically confusing album at first – given the difficulty in following up an album like “OK Computer” (or Z) – but one that should prove to be a major step in the right direction for the Louisville rockers.

But one thing that no critic is willing to say is that everyone was expecting MMJ to be the American answer to Radiohead, and here I think they’ve proved that they are. American music has always fused different music-related ideas together. Like Dylan’s incorporation of the electric guitar in the mid-60’s, or Radiohead’s “Kid A” electronica shift or the Beatles psychedelic movement once the arrived stateside. Now, I wouldn’t put MMJ in the league of any of those artists by any means (yet) but not all positive shift in the music universe was met with critical praise. You always hear stories of how folkie Dylan fans stopped supporting him in any capacity once he went down to Maggie’s Farm and grabbed an electric guitar.

Other reviews besides Pitchfork’s were generally mixed. Nobody anointed them America’s answer to Radiohead and I don’t think anyone thinks they are. They aren’t expected to be and they certainly are an entirely different animal from what a band like Radiohead or Wilco brings to the table.

I decided to read some iTunes reviews of “Evil Urges” (who’s sales may get eaten up by the monster release that is Tha Carter III) and one headline in particular caught my eye. It read, “Never Mind the Hipsters, Here’s Evil Urges.”

I mean…I couldn’t have said it any better. Friday it was announced that My Morning Jacket will be playing at Madison Square Garden – the biggest stage in the center of the world – on New Year’s Eve. 2008, which is shaping out to be perhaps the most important year in music since 1994, will end with MMJ at the Garden.

As far as I’m concerned, Pitchfork is now as much a part of the problem as MTV. Congratulations, you’ve come full circle.

Now about anointing Lil Wayne Best New Music status…