2003 was around the last time I was enamored with My Morning Jacket, but then I thought they were The THING, the what-I've-been-looking-for. I know this record by muscle memory, the way I know Steve Miller's "Fly Like an Eagle" or my phone number from when I was a kid. There's not a lot of records after this that I know in that same manner. I thought it might be the last, but research reveals Iron & Wine's Our Endless Summer Days came out a year after, and Wilco's A Ghost is Born the year after that. And during Hurricane Gustav I played the shit out of Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III but that was more the affections of desperation than love.
This morning. a phrase-adroit friend parenthetically posited "(if desperation can ever be idle)" and maybe in the reversal lies the truth. Idleness is invariably desperate, while love is entrenched and constantly active. I look at my phone full of recent albums introduced to me by desperate publicists, and while there are things to love to be found in some of these, I don't feel entrenched with these records as I do with the one playing now. Some of them I think are even better records, in one slippery quality or another, but I'm not taking a bullet for any of them like I might for the corny, obvious, riotous traps and tropes of the opening of "One Big Holiday." or the way Jim Jones croons "Cali FORN ya."
I do, however, hit "next" a lot through those new records like I always have done with "I Will Sing You Songs" which follows "One Big Holiday" like a sad puppy. When we are in the trenches, we can gloss over the obvious. (listen)
Now that I think of it, I've never listened to the whole album Fly Like an Eagle outside of the singles. (listen) In the Village Voice review, Robert Christgau sighs "But in the end his borrowed hooks and woozy vocal charm are an irresistible formula." Which is how I exactly how I feel about My Morning Jacket now.
This post is brought to you by this post at Blurt, about a show of MMJ photos
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