Written by Jason Gottfried
My Morning Jacket: “The Waterfall”
My Morning Jacket is easily the greatest band ever to have emerged from Louisville.
Of course, the uninitiated most likely only know Louisville as a big town in Kentucky and immediately write it off as irrelevant redneck territory. Louisville seemingly has an invisible force field much like the glass dome that encapsulated Springfield in “The Simpsons Movie.” Except Louisville’s is made of magic rather than glass, and it keeps most of the low-IQ “yeehawness” of typical doofus Kentucky culture out. In short, it’s the Austin or Portland of Kentucky.
To illustrate, one will immediately notice when visiting Louisville, like walking out an abattoir into an open field, a marked absence of the marble-mouthed southern accents that plague the rest of the region. Take it from a veteran of the Bible Belt that this can be a huge relief!
Sure, there’s Lexington (which is really just a pile of old money), and there are a few other medium-sized cities, like Elizabethtown (Johnny Depp’s hometown), Bowling Green (home to Cage The Elephant), and Owensboro, the self-proclaimed “Bluegrass Capitol of the World.” But Louisville is the city that truly lies between Nashville and Cincinnati, at least culturally, and My Morning Jacket is the only band to have emerged from Kentucky onto the global music scene with any lasting power.
In retrospect, when MMJ frontman Jim James—and with a name like that, it already feels like there’s a Jeff Foxworthy joke on the periphery—first released “The Tennessee Fire,” not much happened. There was some shuffling of personnel, and it wasn’t until 2005, with the release of “Z” that things really clicked for two reasons. First, the members who’ve comprised MMJ since then came on board. But more importantly, and perhaps in an effort to change things up as much as possible, James wisely employed John Leckie as producer—the same John Leckie who produced Radiohead’s “The Bends.” To that end, “Z” has more than once been referred to their “OK Computer”; furthermore, “Evil Urges” had the same exploratory feel as Radiohead’s “Kid A.” Just as Radiohead went from being some dudes with guitars to a collective of sound engineers, MMJ went from being something kind of folky or whatever to being hailed (and rightly so) by rock critic MJ Wycha as “The best thing to happen to rock in years,” accolades that have been widely and consistently echoed for the past decade.
So “The Waterfall” can be heard as both a journey as well as a destination. It is speckled with various elements of previous records but refuses to settle firmly into any of it, instead content to display a kaleidoscopic aural plumage from soul to prog rock to driving ‘80s rock and country.
Like a returning champion entering the ring, “Believe (Nobody Knows)” opens confidently, dropping both lyrics and textures evocative of Phish’s “Prince Caspian.” There are traces of a drum machine as well as a melodic loop in the background, but it largely feels like the rock version of a punch in the face.
Almost as if to be contrarian, “Compound Fracture” brings jazz, Motown, and soft rock elements into play. Octave strings float unobtrusively over Gloria Gaynor-worthy “ooh-ooh-oohs,” and James sounds a little like a cross between Lenny Kravitz and Don Henley, if you can imagine that. Drummer Patrick Hallahan lays it down like a boss, driving straight and solid while the rest of the band weaves together something that would closely resemble Steve Winwood or Bruce Hornsby if it didn’t have so damned much swagger. In fact, it would be no surprise if this song actually got someone pregnant.
Again switching gears, James assumes a falsetto and picks up an acoustic guitar. “Like a River” sounds like something written from the foothills of Appalachia. Every bit of magic MMJ ever poured into anything in the past is present in “Like a River,” which almost sounds like Joni Mitchell or Kansas merging bluegrass overtones with the grandeur of the tone poems of Richard Strauss.
“In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)” is dramatic and stage-ready, mixing The Who’s “Who Are You?” with The Band’s “Chest Fever” and even throwing a little Steve Miller keytar riffage in. Structurally, the body of the song is bookended by a low and dirty Fender Rhodes, and the song itself is bookended by folk as “Get the Point” follows, which is more arguably country music than . . . well, just about anything out of Nashville anymore that claims to be “country.” Carl Broemel demonstrates his finesse with a pedal steel, which he coaxes and caresses like Gary Morse.
Another made-for-the-stadium wailer is “Spring (Among the Living),” an Iggy Pop-esque homage to the advent of warmer weather. In its wake, the summery “Thin Line” blends the Flaming Lips and Neil Young together into a relaxed yet impassioned dichotomy.
“Big Decisions” is a heavy-handed and exasperated appeal to someone “sweet and sincere, but so ruled by fear,” whom he implores, “What do you want me to do? / Make all the big decisions for you?” For once, James sounds like a native Kentuckian, appropriately pronouncing “well, I can’t” as “well, I cain’t.”
Effectively combining the plaintive simplicity of REM with the orchestral splendor of Yes, “Tropics (Erase Traces)” is equal parts prog rock and folk music. In contrast, and almost as an afterthought, “Only Memories Remain” is a hazy, bluesy afterparty, decidedly relaxed and bittersweetly navel-gazing.
“The Waterfall” is simply triumphant, the work of a quintet at their height. Mature without stagnating, it’s their cleanest and most focused album yet. It blends a wide variety of influences into something unique without leaning on them as gimmicks. It’s self-referential without being masturbatory or egoistic. It expands and even revives the decades-long rock narrative that, as of 2015, has largely dead-ended elsewhere in the music industry. If you happen to have ten bucks lying around, you’d be foolish not to spend it on “The Waterfall.”
