My Morning Jacket Album: "Z" Release Date: Oct 4, 2005 Label: Ato/Badman Rev Value: [7.0/10] Genre: Rock Styles: Indie Pop, Alternative Country-Rock, Neo-Psychedelia, Dream Pop Buy It

Tracklist:

1 Wordless Chorus (4:12)
2 It Beats for You (3:46)
3 Gideon (3:39)
4 What a Wonderful Man (2:25)
5 Off the Record (5:33)
6 Into the Woods (5:21)
7 Anytime (3:56)
8 Lay Low (6:05)
9 Knot Comes Loose (4:02)
10 Dondante (10:33)
11 (GhostTrack)

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review by:Allmusic
reviewer: Johnny Loftus
Album Value: (4.5/5)

In 2004, a dreamy cover of "Rocket Man" concluded My Morning Jacket's first volume of rarities. Which was prescient, because it's Elton John that Jim James' songs for 2005's Z first bring to mind. From the wistful recollection of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" to Honky Chateau's melodic and genre explorations, John's ability to mesh styles and take detours within his sturdy pop songwriting applies to James here, particularly in the expansive opener, "Wordless Chorus," or the initial happy-go-lucky lilt of "Off the Record." Z is My Morning Jacket's fourth full-length (and second for ATO), and it's the one that might finally jump-start the reaction that James' music has always deserved. It Still Moves from 2003 rightly enjoyed its accolades, but it meandered a little structurally, too, and sometimes got a little lost in its own reverb. On Z, MMJ's traditional influences are present -- the folk, blues, and country tones of John, Neil Young, and the Band shaded by contemporaries like Mercury Rev and Mark Kozelek. But songs like "Lay Low" and "It Beats for You" are crafted tighter, their sound-drenched keyboard lines meeting the percussion head on and riding meaningful flourishes of electric guitar. "Gideon" climaxes in James calling out throatily over twinkling piano and big chords borrowed from the Who, and "What a Wonderful Man" is a raucous, crashing tumble of unhinged crash cymbals, barroom piano, and mirthful yelping. Z is intuitive, intensely creative, classicist-minded, nearly flawless. It's music that's extruded from Jim James' id, and that's bearded, too.
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review by:Pitchfork
reviewer: Stephen M. Deusner, October 6, 2005
Album Value: (7.6/10)

Here's an album that begs for vinyl, although not for the reason you might think. Certainly, My Morning Jacket's worn-in rock 'n' roll-- its starchy guitar riffs and Jim James' other-end-of-a-long-tunnel vocals-- seems tailor-made for the intimate crackle of a dusty turntable. But the concisely titled Z, the band's fourth full-length, needs to be flipped over: It has two distinct sides. Granted, most albums still rely on the two-sided format the same way most movies still rely on the three-act plot, adhering to it almost subconsciously. But I'm not entirely sure My Morning Jacket intended such a dramatic difference between these two half Zs.

As Side One begins, the presence of producer John Leckie (of Radiohead, Stone Roses, and, er, Kula Shaker fame) is immediately evident. "Wordless Chorus" launches Z with a hardscrabble sound that recalls their earlier material, suggesting that the brighter production and looser, jambandier approach of It Still Moves was a slight detour. There are more keyboards on these songs, courtesy of new member Bo Koster, and more confident experimentation-- a little reggae, a little r&b, even a little ambient. Defiantly flaunting their rural eccentricities, My Morning Jacket once again recall the earliest of early R.E.M., before you could understand Stipe's mumbling, back when the Georgia foursome defined themselves by claiming a birthright to kudzu-covered mythology. It's not really My Morning Jacket's sound that suggests this comparison, but their willingness to let the music retain its mystery despite the risk of seeming obscure or evasive.

So Z abandons the Skynyrdisms of It Still Moves, but that album's lessons remain intact: Compared to those on previous albums, these tracks have more guitar crunch and tighter song structures. Even single "Off the Record", with its driving reggae rhythms and James' lively performance, foregoes a dueling-guitar climax in favor of an unraveling outro that sounds like Air noir. "Wordless Chorus" hinges on just what its title suggests: Jim James singing aaahs and ohhhs between verses as the band rocks around him. It's as if the entire album, not just this song, could be stripped of literal meaning, as if everything My Morning Jacket needs to say can be communicated exclusively through sound. And it works, especially at the end of "Wordless Chorus", when James breaks into a rapturous r&b yowl that recalls the Passion of the Prince..(...)

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review by: tinymixtapes
reviewer: jspicer
Album Value: (4/5)

Classic rock is the new face of indie rock. It doesn't matter if it's the psychedelic-inspired rock of Dungen, the skronk and pop of Wilco, or the southern rock of My Morning Jacket—classic rock, in its most generic meaning, is making a huge comeback. All we need now are the Kiss make-up, the expensive pyrotechnics, and Rick Nielsen novelty guitars. However, Z doesn't rely on fancy get-ups and cheap tricks. My Morning Jacket refuse to be molded into the next southern rock saviors, and the band's fourth full-length album moves farther away from traditional chops and into some uncharted territory for a band who records in silos on Kentucky farms.

What you can expect is what makes My Morning Jacket tried and true: bigger-than-life lyrics, classic rock swagger, and the need to move forward. Popping in the CD and listening to the opener "Wordless Chorus," a dose of what's to come is delivered soft and easy. The band has subscribed to the Mary Poppins philosophy: a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. The track is all hushed guitars and whirling melody with a carnival beat—if only songs like this were played while riding the 4-H Merry-Go-Round. And if it makes a difference to you, the chorus actually is wordless.

(...)

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review by: Pop Matters
reviewer:John Bergstrom
Album Value: (7/10)

It Still Moves; It Still Rocks

How can the faint scent of disappointment lurk in the air when a good band releases its best album to date?

Sometimes a band releases an album that crystallizes that band's sound to such a degree, captures so completely everything that is unique about it, so brightly illuminates its strengths, that a follow-up seems almost unnecessary. My Morning Jacket's third album and last studio release, 2003's It Still Moves, was an album like that. It didn't display a lot of stylistic diversity. Not every song was great, and several were almost superfluous. But as a showcase for Jim James' high-pitched, reverb-drenched voice and songs about finding redemption through love and rock 'n' roll, and the band's boot-stomping yet heartbreaking brand of widescreen music, it was and is a classic.

Therefore it's impossible to listen to or discuss new album Z without the shadow of It Still Moves lurking outside the room. "For the past I'm digging/ A grave so big/ It would swallow up the sea," James sang on the latter album -- and parts of Z are certainly a departure if not a slate-wiping rebirth. The new album is clean, concise; and, song for song, the strongest My Morning Jacket record yet. The difference, ultimately, is this: It Still Moves sounded haunted and haunting. Z sounds like a band going into a studio and making a really good album. Take it on those terms and it won't let you down; in fact, it'll put in hard time on your car stereo.

While parts of previous My Morning Jacket albums sounded sloppy, Z is crisply-produced and markedly more refined, in part due to co-producer (with James) John Leckie. Leckie is best known for two records -- The Stone Roses' self-titled debut and Radiohead's The Bends. He might seem an odd selection for My Morning Jacket, but read Leckie's description of another band he produced in the '90s, House of Freaks, and the pairing makes perfect sense: "They combined Americana songs and atmospheres. They... wanted to sound British, as well as sounding American." That's My Morning Jacket in a nutshell. On Z, Leckie helps the band broaden its palette without losing its musical identity.

One of the startling aspects of Z is the absence of reverb from the backing tracks -- but, breathe easy, not James' vocals -- on several songs. So, on first listen "Wordless Chorus" and "It Beats for You" are subtle and underwhelming, even more surprising given the band's recent addition of a keyboardist and second guitarist. Give them a few listens, though, and they're almost as affecting a Track 1/Track 2 combo as "Mahgeetah" and "Dancefloors" on It Still Moves. "Chorus" in particular has that soaring, multitracked James chorus that simply arouses the spirit. Toward the end, James adds some soulful, falsetto wailing, and even the shittiest day turns into pure sunlight.(...)

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review by: Lost At Sea
reviewer: Phillip Buchan
Album Value: (8.5/10)

Beneath the bales of soft-serve psychedelic reverb and Crazy Horse-chasing jamming that characterized My Morning Jacket’s prior efforts, there has always been a distinct, interesting voice. Front man and lyricist Jim James has consistently tapped the lump-in-the-throat of the human experience, wrapping his emotional mining in epic swirl and naked sincerity that would come off as cloying or forced if it were anything other than an expression of a complex, highly-developed artistic persona.

Z continues to explore the band’s voice, but in a different manner than past works. MMJ’s musical palate has radically expanded: the reverb and alt-country trappings remain, but they no longer dominate the band’s aesthetic. In nodding to U2, John McLaughlin, Sunny Day Real Estate, Mercury Rev, The Clash and countless other icons through a holistic approach to the pop canon, James and his band mates refuse to let sonics define them; it’s the whole “so much style that it’s wasted” bit that Stephen Malkmus sang about. The structural expansiveness of MMJ’s seven minute barnburners has been translated into a formal breadth that draws attention to the spiritual twine holding this diverse song cycle together.

The band spends a great deal of time polarizing their warring sensibilities into individual songs. The bombastic, soul-tinged arena rock of “Gideon” coexists with the slide guitar and hand percussion bareness of “Knot Comes Loose”. Electronic blips, programmed poly-rhythms and breathy “ooh”s and “aah”s dominate opener “I,” while raging phallic guitar scales assert themselves in closer “Dondanti.” James lets his earnestness run free through a soaring, textured closed space in “It Beats for You,” then tosses off a cranking honky-tonk ditty about ice cream with “What a Wonderful Man.”(...)

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review by: Rolling Stone
reviewer: DAVID FRICKE Oct 20, 2005
Album Value: (4/5)

America is a lot closer to getting its own Radiohead, and it isn't Wilco. My Morning Jacket, from Louisville, Kentucky, have been on the road to their OK Computer for a while; imagine "My Iron Lung" soaked in sour mash and you're pretty close to the massed-guitar seizures on 2003's It Still Moves. The band still has too much bluegrass in its blood and Lynyrd Skynyrd in the riffing here -- the jamming elbowroom of "Lay Low" and the plunging power chords of "Gideon" -- to pass for paranoid androids. But a major lineup change on the way to Z apparently inspired My Morning Jacket's prime mover, singer-guitarist-songwriter Jim James, to mess with his template, to impressive effect. He is now writing actual pop songs, like the two and a half minutes of "What a Wonderful Man," which jumps and crackles like a Seventies Dixie-rock take on the Who's "Happy Jack." And there is an emphasis on keyboards, in pulse and architecture, that adds buoyancy and color to James' writing and flatters his keening, stratospheric tenor. The Eno-esque flutter and gentle bump of the electronics in "Wordless Chorus" bloom, with the addition of some tick-tock guitar, into something like Mercury Rev on Soul Train. In "Off the Record," the band's loose, rough strut dissolves into reggae-dub shadows, while the closing "Dondante" builds, explodes and expires like Pink Floyd's "Careful With That Axe, Eugene": It's a long, riveting psychedelic death scene. Except James, as a lyricist, for all of his free-associative spray, is plainly focused on life and how to hold on to it. "Tell me, spirit -- what has not been done?/I'll rush out and do it," he declares in "Wordless Chorus" -- a lot like Radiohead's Thom Yorke, but with more light in that near-falsetto.

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