MY MORNING JACKET have been touring America and Europe for two years and it shows: beards and long hair, bare feet and wholly immersed in their own music, My Morning Jacket just rolled through Brighton and they rocked.
Witnessing them play non stop for two and a half hours was like joining them on a road trip through America, a special chemistry between five friends who have grown up together, each song passing through, one part of the whole adventure. This is definitely not urban music, but music influenced by the American landscape, the great plains of the Southern states, encompassing a vast range of experience and emotion, drunk and dancing blindly in the wilderness of One Big Holiday, sleeping under the stars with Mageetah and the wide open heart of Golden.
Their faces hidden behind masses of hair, no-one in the band said much other than graciously giving it up to the audience several times. And there really was no need for interruption. The dynamics were so rightly and organically managed that one song flowed naturally into the next like the Mississippi river into the delta.
Throughout the set, largely playing songs from their latest, limited edition "It Still Moves" album (RCA Records) bassist Two-Tone Tommy, guitarist Johnny Quaid and vocalist/ (V) guitarist Jimmy James (interestingly staged front right) flocked together in wild but wholly symbiotic formations, literally worshipping at the altar of their powerful drummer Patrick Hallahan, and the storming music they made together, heads banging, straddling guitars and pirouetting like a bunch of rock'n'roll whirling dervishes, a rock solid rhythm behind, in front, above and below spacious melodies and jangly guitars.
|
For encores, a solo acoustic Jimmy James re-emerged, for one song accompanied by the singer of support band South San Gabriel for harmony, with his mellow gold voice, yearning at times, effortless and far reaching, that carries the listener over and beyond the other side of the canyon. It was sad to see them go back to where they came from, like leaving friends you’ve made in far off places.
All in all a great gig!
|
