On November 3rd 2005 The Georgia Straight published an interview with Jim James, done by Mike Usinger. The original interview can be found here.
Keywords: Genre, Carl Broemel and Bo Koster join the band, Influences - Jim James, The Muppets, Appearances
For reasons only partly linked to producer John Leckie, critics are suddenly hailing My Morning Jacket as America's answer to Radiohead. Leckie, famous for having worked on Radiohead's OK Computer, co-helmed MMJ's just-released Z. In doing so, he helped create a mind-expanding, spaced-out odyssey that will, once and for all, end suggestions that My Morning Jacket are somehow the spiritual descendants of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Theoretically, this shedding of the southern-rock tag should please Jim James, singer-guitarist and main songwriter for the Louisville, Kentucky, collective. Instead, he admits he doesn't really care one way or the other, if only because he's never had much use for labels.
"People are silly," says the laid-back, famously hirsute bandleader, on the line from a Wisconsin tour stop. "They'll literally stick a title or a label on a band based on physical appearance. That can be bothersome from time to time-as much as you try not to read that kind of stuff, somebody will e-mail you something that someone wrote. At the end of the day, you have to realize it all just comes down to the music, and what it means to the person inside of you."
Coproduced by James, Z marks a radical re-envisioning of My Morning Jacket, which in the past hasn't been shy about exposing its southern roots. Fuck "Free Bird" (which MMJ ironically performs in the new Cameron Crowe flick Elizabethtown): this is the sound of a band not afraid to experiment with falsetto crooning and '80s-vintage synth washes. The album kicks off with the soft-focus rocker "Wordless Chorus", which largely abandons guitars for heart-flutter keyboards, stop-and-start drums, and vocal histrionics that sound like Prince tackling "Bennie and the Jets". From there, My Morning Jacket is on a mission to challenge its fans, swinging from breathtaking piano- and pedal steel-adorned ballads ("Knot Comes Loose") to epic-sounding Americana jams ("Lay Low"). The oceans of reverb that drenched past albums are gone, replaced with a sound that's ambitiously ambient ("Gideon" sounds beamed down from heaven), yet not without the taste of southern dirt (the ragged-glory rocker "What a Wonderful Man").
For an idea what James was after with the disc productionwise, you can start with what he wasn't aiming for. Back in the early '90s, he was a champion of alt-nation landmarks like the Afghan Whigs' Gentlemen. But when he listens to such records today, he can't help but feel that they haven't aged well.
"We've always really tried to stay away from being an alternative-rock band," James says. "We're more interested in being a weird rock 'n' roll band. Alternative rock hasn't lasted, and I think it has something to do with the production. Take Weezer: their first album is a classic fucking record with great songs and great writing, but it sounds so early '90s with that sort of heavy-distortion approach. Same with the Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream."
My Morning Jacket-at the Commodore tonight (November 3)-wasn't afraid to bring the crazy-horse noise on outings like 2003's It Still Moves, a disc that placed it at the vanguard of a much-hyped southern-rock revival that never happened. But where the likes of Kings of Leon and the Drive-By Truckers are now wondering what the hell went wrong, James and his bandmates aren't looking in the rearview mirror. Ironically, James says it's a miracle that Z even got made. Sometime at the end of 2004, My Morning Jacket was on the verge of imploding, as founding band members Johnny Quaid (guitar) and Danny Cash (keyboards) announced they'd had enough of life on the road. James admits he was devastated, but not for long.
"That whole period was like some sort of magic trick," he says. "I thought we were going to stop being a band. Instead we decided to audition people. The first two guys we saw [guitarist Carl Broemel and keyboardist Bo Koster] were so nice that we decided to go ahead and try them out. From the first show, they fucking went for it, and that really inspired the rest of us."
Recharged with Z, James says his ultimate goal isn't to become the next Radiohead, even though he's taken dramatic steps toward doing that. Instead, if he has a wish for My Morning Jacket, it's-somewhat bizarrely-that the band will mean as much to others as The Muppet Show once did to him. Forget every band that MMJ has ever been compared to-if you're looking for the main reason James is playing rock 'n' roll today, you can start with Animal, Dr. Teeth, and Floyd Pepper. "People ask me what my first musical experience was, and it's what I heard on The Muppet Show," he says reverentially. "I like the way that show appealed to both older people and younger kids. That's kind of where I wanna shoot with My Morning Jacket-to create something that people of all ages can really enjoy."
Even though Z has given him good reason to worry, Thom Yorke can, evidently, rest safe.
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