For modern listeners, driving in a car frames the context for many of the songs they listen to. And some songs simply sound better while cruising down a long stretch of highway. There may not be two better road songs than My Morning Jacket's "Mahgeetah" and "Golden." The first and third tracks from the band's seminal It Still Moves are perfect companions. A fall day. The dying light. And these sounds washing over you.
"Mahgeetah" is utter nonsense; just the way Jim James apparently delivers "my lady." After that, all you need to hear is the sprawling, feel-good guitars and James' high-wire vocals washed in silos of Kentucky reverb. And "Golden," like the morning sun scattering over the open road, describes a "feeling in my bones / I never felt before," and then wraps that feeling with a spine-tingling pedal steel-guitar. Even the amateur video makers below understood that the song belongs in a moving car.
My Morning Jacket fuses Southern rock, country, and psychedelia to arrive at a new kind of open-hearted Americana; the band's transition from cult-favorites to beloved arena-rockers has been one of the best stories in rock music this decade.
Why listen? You own and drive a car, don't you?
Something else? "One Big Holiday," "Wordless Chorus," "Off the Record," "Anytime," "Lay Low," "Highly Suspicious," "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Part II."
No comments:
Post a Comment