The Georgia Straight (2011)

On June 23rd 2011 The Georgia Straight published an interview with Tom Blankenship, done by Adrian Mack. The original interview can be found here.

Keywords:

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.”

The Georgia Straight (2005)

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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