Live: My Morning Jacket

This past Friday I had the good fortune to check out My Morning Jacket and Elvis Perkins playing the House of Blues located behind the magic curtain of Disneyland.  The show packed energy and intimacy into the small venue with both artists bringing their A game to provide a memorable evening of good old fashioned rock and roll.

The crowd was as diverse, as should be expected considering the location and artists, meaning that the hippies were represented along with the hipsters, thirty something drunkards (a few too many of these), and frat boys.  When Elvis Perkins began his forty-five minute set, I was surprised to see a contingent of lovelorn ladies matching him word for word, considering I had no idea who he was or whether or not he is a reputable artist.  I am on the bandwagon now.  His brand of indie-folk was refreshing it’s similar to artists like Bright Eyes, Neutral Milk Hotel, and M.Ward without being derivative of any of these.  His backing band provided exuberance with dancing, a giant marching bass drum, mandolin, and drunken (seeming) backing vocals.  But like any singer-songwriter, his success hinged on the strength of his songs, which were all uncompromisingly melodic and lyrically strange.  Standout’s included “Emile’s Vietname in the Sky” in which he busted some French (or gibberish), “Ash Wednesday” and the set closer “Doomsday”.  His album will be released on February 20th and is called Ash Wednesday.

Speaking of jumping on bandwagons, I have definitely jumped on My Morning Jacket’s in the last couple years, especially with the release of Z one of my favorite albums in recent memory.  However besides that album and It Still Moves I find the music from band’s earlier records to sound a bit dated, especially live and in contrast to how progressive the new music is.  Regardless Jim James came off as a rock star, resembling the wrestler Berserker (the Viking guy) and wearing awesome knee high boots with skeleton bones wrapping up his legs.

The band opened with “It Beats For You” and “Gideon” and included most of Z in their set (except “Into the Woods”, unfortunately), with James never failing to hit the high notes and even pulling out the Flying V for set closer “One Big Holiday”.  Other set highlights included “Lay Low” and the encore barrage of “Anytime” and “Run Thru” (both Flying V accented and when James gets into it, it looks like his guitar is a poisonous snake that he must wrangle to its death).  The lights were strobe-heavy, the band and crowd were both pumped, and I was happy to see rock stars behaving like rock stars.  I think the show was technically in support of their live album, Okonokos, but the band did not use it as a guide to shape their live show with the jams differing and the setlist shuffled from the live double disc set.

All in all, a good time.

Here are some jams:

My Morning Jacket - Wordless Chorus (Live).mp3

My Morning Jacket - Lay Low (Live).mp3