Rolling Rock

Mostly everything that I currently listen to is marginalized to the unfavorable ‘indie’ isle of the record store, a product positioning unlikely to ever reach the mass audience. Most of the time its justified. I can’t imagine the ‘average listener’ ever wanting to hear a massively dense Khanate record, or a slippery Need New Body CD, or even the Futureheads smart-alecky pop-post-punk. Those that do cross over, the Modest Mouses (never again) and Flaming Lipses (see what I mean?), rarely have continual commerical success. And for the obvious argument – no, Nirvana was never an indie band. So where’s the payoff from being an indie musician? At most it includes a moderate amount of fame, a sub-par amount of money, and a lasting impression on white males in track jackets (this year).

For My Morning Jacket, we finally have an indie band raised in the minors that’s looking for the pot of gold – the famous Rock and Roll. From their beginning output they’ve always stared down the righteous road of rock salvation. Over the years they’ve streamlined their sound from a folky, mostly acoustic experiment in reverb to a ‘commercially viable’ amalgamation of 70’s and 80’s rock and roll. Their newest record Z does the thing that no one else does. They take your old Boston, Grateful Dead, Steve Miller, and, sure, the Lynyrd Tucker Band records and update the beasts. Most everyone in the underground seems terrified of these groups so far as to completely ignore and distance themselves from them. Not true. They wrote some of the best, most fun and engaging music of the 70’s.

Rightly so My Morning Jacket has been enjoying a mild amount of success in the jam band circuit. After all, they play a music easy to comprehend and noodley enough to satisfy your average Jazz Mandolin Project fan. The difference is that they don’t take the gimmicky approach most of the bands do, incorporating stupid instruments and bad voices. MMJ can sing, wail and flail with the best rock bands of all time. Their shit can be a white-hot supernova, or it can be a country road rambling on. All this and their versed enough to stay interesting in the confines of a rock tune.

Their newest record Z is their best. There are still missteps, but the overarching feel of the album ties everything they’ve done together to this point. Their music is undoubtedly arena or club-ready. It smokes and carries that midnight, lava-lamp sheen that all cool rock music should. It uses pianos and doesn’t sound like a pussy (‘Tiny Dancer’?), guitars that improvise but go somewhere. And Jim James is still singing. Just the sound of his gorgeous wail on “Wordless Chorus” should give you reason enough to believe. Rock music doesn’t have to have words or music so deep, philosophical and theory-heavy that it isn’t transcendent.