My Morning Jacket
Circuital
Spunk/EMI
The sixth album by My Morning Jacket is dotted with themes of personal growth and one’s winding travels through life. There’s a parallel there with the band, which has evolved from rustic reverbed folk and longhaired rock jams on its first three albums, to slippery funk, soul, and R&B on its last two. All those are up for grabs here, but rather than swing between genre extremes, My Morning Jacket has refined a homogenised blend. Aptly titled considering its circle-of-life sentiments and jammy indulgences, Circuital doesn’t stake out new territory so much as do laps and zigzags.
The first album since 2003’s It Still Moves to be recorded in the band’s home state of Kentucky, Circuital was cut live to tape in a church gymnasium with producer Tucker Martine (The Decemberists, Laura Veirs). Martine nails the expansive warmth of MMJ, and the lack of many overdubs means this can feel like the sprawling debut of new material at some isolated, audience-less concert. The band simply gets together and plays, with Jim James taking the role of frontman almost by default. Not that he doesn’t rise to the occasion; witness the shaggy guitar overgrowth of ‘You Wanna Freak Out’ and supremely hopeful lyrics of the ballad ‘Wonderful (The Way I Feel)’.
But often – and this isn’t a complaint – the players disappear into the moody whole of the band, moving easily from the Curtis Mayfield soul of opener ‘Victory Dance’ to the title track’s seven-minute drift; ‘The Day is Coming’'s harmonies seemingly inspired by Seal’s ‘Kiss from a Rose’. Horns and choir anchor the single ‘Holdin’ on to Black Metal’ – catchy but one of the weaker tracks – while steel guitar and strings come in elsewhere and the robust triumph ‘First Light’ crackles around the edges. Despite lyrics about young rebellion, ‘Outta My System’ harkens back to the casual pop crawl of 2005’s single ‘Off the Record’. The closing pair of ‘Slow Slow Tune’ and ‘Movin’ Away’ finally decompress even while exuding an old-school sincerity.
Circuital may be inward-looking and slow-moving, but it’s quite sweet as well. Think of it as a long, friendly jam with a sizeable budget and no shortage of nooks to explore.
Doug Wallen