Chances are, if you’re My Morning Jacket, you go on stage every night with the odds stacked against you. Do something like play a three-hour-plus gig at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival spiked with Crüe and Sly Stone covers and word gets around: Crowds want you to sweat waterfalls, play more guitar solos than the Allman Brothers on uppers and basically do everything short of pulling them one-by-one on stage to share a Springsteenian “Dancing in the Dark” moment. They want to enter the church of Jim James by the thousands and be converted to MMJ devotees in a way that is both en masse and personal.
So forgive the crowd at the Pavilion for being low on patience and high on expectations. In the men’s room before the show, one fellow asked his friend why the venue wasn’t at capacity by 10 minutes before the 7pm showtime.
“They [the audience] are going to fuck us over, and the band will start late,” he complained to his friend.
 A little bit country, a little bit rock ’n’ roll: My Morning Jacket covered some serious ground in a lengthy set at the Charlottesville Pavilion. |
But there’s a difference between an epiphany and an awakening—one smacks you over the head and the other builds up from your toes. And My Morning Jacket structures whole songs, records and live performances according to the latter.
The congregation seemed to swell to twice its size at the moment the Jacketeers took the stage led by frontman Jim James, wrapped in a velvet cape that he used throughout the night to accentuate his movements—both sinister and innocent, Dracula one instant, then a child using a bath towel as a pair of wings. People swept down through the aisles of seats, hands raised, to stand at the front as the band launched into the double-kick drum and synthesizer gurgle of “Evil Urges.” James reached the coda before the song’s pulverizing guitar bridge—angelically crooning “I’m ready for it now”—and with nowhere to go but up, delivered the evening’s first two-guitar sermon, riffing along with second guitarist Carl Broemel.
And most of the band’s 25-song set followed suit: simple, Southern-flecked guitar riffs over drums and bass heavy enough to anchor a battleship, followed by the unavoidable eruption of guitar hopscotch from James and Broemel. It’s a deceptively simple formula that My Morning Jacket re-engages again and again, and very rarely does it wear out its welcome; the band recalled the easily anthemic melodies of pop songs like “Baker Street” and “Save the Last Dance for Me” with the hazy sax outro of “Dondante” and “Evelyn is Not Real,” one of a few songs from early album The Tennessee Fire that got some welcome amplification.
And if My Morning Jacket only delivered the minimum, the show would’ve been memorable. But expectations are maxed out: MMJ crowds want more! Three times the guitar riffs! Two times the hair! Five times the songs!
And the band was so fist-pumpingly affirmative and rump-shakingly committed to the “Go big or go home” mentality that it was hard to not be bewitched and won over. The band didn’t slip into a minor key until “Masterplan” from It Still Moves, and didn’t dwell too long before returning to the feelgood major keys. James skipped around with all the manic energy of Eddie Van Halen with his guitar strapped to him during every huge anthem, from “Aluminum Park” to the twin wrecking balls of “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream Pt.2” and “Run Thru.” Even better, the guitar riffs felt so messily wound yet refreshingly enthusiastic that each explosion felt spontaneous, which made each demanding audience member feel as if they were seeing something unique.
The set finale of “Run Thru” was a brilliant mash-up of a techno breakdown and ratatat riffs, like Skynyrd hijacking Daft Punk’s effects rig. Throw in a six-song encore capped by “Mahgeetah” and “One Big Holiday,” and critiquing My Morning Jacket in the context of other bands becomes difficult, like comparing Godzilla to geckos. Same sort of creature, sure, but the havoc created is more than you could expect.
