Spring Break
Southern alt-country group's concert appeals more to newbie crowd
by Ben Serby
Arts | 9/9/08
Posted online at 11:12 PM EST on 9/8/08
/ Last updated at 2:15 AM EST on 9/8/08
Anyone who has heard Evil Urges, the most recent My Morning Jacket release, must be aware that this band's sound is changing dramatically. The new album features short, mellow, radio-friendly songs with simpler structures and fewer frills than even the most pared-down pop of their prior records. The album also features several tracks that represent an odd foray into new musical territory for My Morning Jacket-places as varied and surprising as disco and metal.
To fans of their earlier material, Evil Urges amounts to something of a controversy. The more listenable tracks feel tired and less inspired than almost anything off of Z or It Still Moves, while the more offbeat genre explorations are miscalculated and blundering. Thus, through their late reinvention, the band appears to be moving in two directions at the same time; one is a boring, sleepy and supremely marketable imitation of what fans found enjoyable in earlier MMJ while the other is hard to engage on account of its stubborn divergence from the path the band has so successfully blazed on earlier records. The upshot of all of this is a doubly jarring experience of hearing a lame yet euphonious alternative-pop song by MMJ on the soft-rock station in the dentist's office, only to be bewildered by their more bizarre, highly inaccessible attempts to branch out. It seems as if, sensing an opportunity for increased mainstream success, they wanted to dumb down their sound but then took an opposite tack and decided to do something "interesting" for their faithful listeners.
In trying to have it both ways, though, MMJ seem to have failed at the latter objective-at least based on the show they played Saturday night at the Bank of America Pavilion. The crowd itself demonstrated a change in MMJ's fan base, with attendees being less of the neo-hippie, hillbilly-hip and indie types I was used to seeing at previous MMJ concerts. Instead, the show was littered with Celtics hats, college T-shirts and overflowing cups of beer-in short, the sort of concertgoers one would expect to find at a Dave Matthews Band show. Tellingly, the overwhelming response to tunes off the new album, such as "I'm Amazed," felt disproportionate to the energy in the music, especially when judged against older material performed over the course of the evening. It was obvious that the crowd was far less familiar with anything predating Evil Urges.
To fans of their earlier material, Evil Urges amounts to something of a controversy. The more listenable tracks feel tired and less inspired than almost anything off of Z or It Still Moves, while the more offbeat genre explorations are miscalculated and blundering. Thus, through their late reinvention, the band appears to be moving in two directions at the same time; one is a boring, sleepy and supremely marketable imitation of what fans found enjoyable in earlier MMJ while the other is hard to engage on account of its stubborn divergence from the path the band has so successfully blazed on earlier records. The upshot of all of this is a doubly jarring experience of hearing a lame yet euphonious alternative-pop song by MMJ on the soft-rock station in the dentist's office, only to be bewildered by their more bizarre, highly inaccessible attempts to branch out. It seems as if, sensing an opportunity for increased mainstream success, they wanted to dumb down their sound but then took an opposite tack and decided to do something "interesting" for their faithful listeners.
In trying to have it both ways, though, MMJ seem to have failed at the latter objective-at least based on the show they played Saturday night at the Bank of America Pavilion. The crowd itself demonstrated a change in MMJ's fan base, with attendees being less of the neo-hippie, hillbilly-hip and indie types I was used to seeing at previous MMJ concerts. Instead, the show was littered with Celtics hats, college T-shirts and overflowing cups of beer-in short, the sort of concertgoers one would expect to find at a Dave Matthews Band show. Tellingly, the overwhelming response to tunes off the new album, such as "I'm Amazed," felt disproportionate to the energy in the music, especially when judged against older material performed over the course of the evening. It was obvious that the crowd was far less familiar with anything predating Evil Urges.
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