On June 23rd 2011 The Georgia Straight published an interview with Tom Blankenship, done by Adrian Mack. The original interview can be found here.
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God, some bruises never fade. It’s been three years since My Morning Jacket released Evil Urges and people are still talking about “Highly Suspicious”, the self-consciously ludicrous attempt at ’80s funk that sits in the primo position of third track on the album. Check pretty much any review of the band’s latest, Circuital, and you’ll find a reassuring reference—usually in the first paragraph—to the merciful absence of any such pencil-to-the-eardrum provocations.
Oddly enough, bassist Tom Blankenship chuckles and then debunks the idea that his band put it there to fuck with its audience. “I guess I knew when I first heard that demo that people would have the reaction that they had,” he tells the Straight from a tour stop in Minneapolis. “But it surprises me that people are still talking about it. But if you went and bought At Dawn or The Tennessee Fire after you heard that, you’d probably be, like, ‘Is this the same band?’ ”
That’s the thing, of course. Anybody intimate with My Morning Jacket’s chronology knew that it was the same band, and saw “Highly Suspicious” for what is was, which was perhaps the most extreme example yet of a habitual restlessness. The Kentucky-born five-piece was already heading in that direction with Z in 2005, with somewhat more successful attempts at mutated R & B like “Wordless Chorus”. This was after establishing itself with three records of peerless psychedelic country rock.
But as Blankenship explains, that’s really only how it looks on the outside. “I think it’s one of those things where we never talk about the changes the band goes through,” he insists. “We don’t really have those state-of-the-union talks. A lot of the process of doing interviews is this strange sort of therapy where you get to reflect and look back, and ask these questions, and think about these things that you normally don’t, or otherwise wouldn’t have. Cause you can’t have an outside perspective most of the time, especially after you’ve just completed an album. You’ve tried so hard to be in the moment, and focusing on one thing.”
In that case, we’re happy to give Blankenship the chance to reflect on Circuital. It sounds like something of a regrouping effort on cuts like the title track, which has the deep, arcing, rural jam-band quality of MMJ’s early work. The band’s soft-rock inclinations are there in “Wonderful (The Way I Feel)”, and “Outta My System” is only one example of My Morning Jacket’s tireless gift for a simple but devastating hook.
The most outré moment, and it’s relatively muted, is a hilarious take on aging headbangers called “Holdin On to Black Metal”. In perverse contrast to the subject matter, it’s built on a looped riff from a ’60s Thai pop song. “We were playing that riff over and over again,” Blankenship recalls, “and [vocalist-guitarist-songwriter] Jim (James) kept saying, ‘Play it like you’re child soldiers marching through the streets in Cambodia.’ ”
The result is something like the Go! Team doing a spy movie soundtrack from 1965. The song’s theme, meanwhile, permeates the record in some ways, at least in Blankenship’s mind. “I’ve always made a point for 12 years now to not really ask Jim what the lyrics mean, because it’s always been more important for me to write myself into them, in a way,” he offers. “But I’ve always thought, lyrically, a lot of the songs on past albums have been about Jim questioning what life is, or—coming back to me—my own life, or why I am the way that I am. And I feel like with this record there’s more a sense of what comes with age is accepting who you are and being okay with it, and accepting that you don’t always have the answers.”
There’s certainly a warm sense of resignation to parts of Circuital. Where Evil Urges ended with eight minutes of tripped-out disco (“Touch Me I’m Going to Scream Pt.2”), the new record fades out on a cavernous and sentimental ballad (“Slow Slow Tune”), and a downbeat waltz decorated with mournful piano and lap steel (“Movin Away”). Perhaps most indelible is the opening track, “Victory Dance”; a God’s-eye view of the planet set against a backdrop of Pink Floyd crashing an airborne pig into Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds.
Blankenship laughs at the comparison, but had his own unique concept for the track. It seems that My Morning Jacket is something of a method act. The bassist says James gives his bandmates “abstract, not literal” instructions when they start working on new material. “He’ll talk about it like it’s musical role-playing, in a way, or musical make-believe. Like that world that you played in with neighbourhood kids where you’re just imagining some scenario.”
When it came time to put “Victory Dance” together, that’s precisely what Blankenship and drummer Patrick Hallahan did. “It was in the exact same key as ‘How the Gods Kill’, by Danzig, E flat, so we played it like we were the rhythm section of Danzig circa ’92,” he says. “I just imagined being in my basement when I was in the eighth or ninth grade, and then there I am. A black T-shirt, my acid-wash jeans, hanging out in the basement.”
Still holdin’ on to Danzig, then?
“Oh yes.”
