My Morning Jacket is one of the best rock bands on the planet. The band's live shows are an experience, punctuated by yelps and open-road thunder and interspersed with strains of folk, alt-country, and reverbed psychedelia. With Circuital, the band's sixth studio album, the Kentucky jam-rockers settle into a comfortable, loose-sounding groove that attempts to approach the band's live feel and sound. While there is nothing quite like an MMJ show, this record at least reaches for that feeling, which, thankfully, will have to be enough.
Recorded in an empty Louisville gymnasium, Circuital returns to the band's core sound, perhaps a knowing retreat from the scattershot experiments on the much-maligned (but now underrated) Evil Urges. While the record does not equal the band's best work on It Still Moves and Z, Jim James and his merry men seem no worse for the wear. Indeed, there is a lyrical confidence and freedom on this record that bodes well for the future.
Check out the country-rock jamming of the title-track, the dire-warning beats of "The Day is Coming," the sweet folk of "Wonderful (The Way I Feel)," the hard-knock lessons of "Outta My System," and the choir-rock dangers of "Holdin' On to Black Metal." And please take note: underappreciate these guys at your peril.
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