My Morning Jacket

In interviews leading up to the release of Evil Urges, frontman Jim James had expressed a desire to move away from “normal rock and roll sounds,” which was quite the paradox to begin with. But then he also favourably likened his efforts to the same of those “fucking awesome, awesome weirdos,” Radiohead. Why a band, that’s only an album-old in the world of versatility, must willingly take on such loaded expectations, and so superficially, is anyone’s guess. But on Urges (barring the brilliant ‘Touch Me I’m Going To Scream Pt 1 and 2’), MMJ have managed to lose the one thing they did have going for them: a perfect balance between country past and alternative rock aspirations, one that gave its predecessor an aura of unassuming genius. Those expecting a follow-up of the possibilities thrown open with 2005’s Z will be disappointed with the band’s attempts to hide behind vacuous riffing (‘Aluminium Park’), bad falsetto singing over mouthfuls of worse lyrics (‘Evil Urges’; “Dedicate your love to any man or woman/ No racial boundary lines, no social subdivisions”) and dull country twaddle (‘I’m Amazed’). Not to mention the string arrangements hard at work everywhere, bridging the gap between alt (as in alt-country) and schmaltz.

But having said that, not all the news is bad; not just for those who live by the law of the daily Shuffle sync, but for fans as well. The band does show-off some substance here or there in the form of the odd folksy melody (‘Librarian’), heartfelt country vocal (‘Sec Walkin’) and accomplished solo (‘I’m Amazed’ again). So, a degree of schizophrenia is at work on Urges; and if there’s one song that epitomises the confusion, it has to be ‘Highly Suspicious.’ Possibly the strangest addition to the band’s oeuvre, the three-minute lark is designed to divide followers biblically. While it’s likely that the song is a brilliant pastiche (in a way that only Prince singing for Daft Punk with Billy Gibbons on the guitar can be) and that it might also elicit knowing nods of ‘ah, clever irony’, it is, then again, shallow enough to in fact be shockingly unimaginative. Ultimately, such dizzying arrays of style and hit-or-miss trickery don’t do too well to hold this disc together. Some urges, more than others, are perhaps best left alone.