My Morning Jacket

Who are those guys?

Ask five fans what kind of music My Morning Jacket plays and you’ll get five different answers. It’s “country-rock.” Or it’s “jam-rock.” Or it’s “space-twang.” The word “Southern” is often used as a modifier, and the word “reverb” is certain to be mentioned. But the labels frustrate My Morning Jacket—not because none of them apply, but because all of them apply at one time or another. Like their spiritual cousins The Flaming Lips, My Morning Jacket embraces possibilities, welcomes nearly all musical influences and acknowledges few limits. It’s “rock ’n’ roll,” hold the hyphens, please.

And what’s often termed “Southern” may actually be, instead, the sound of Middle America. Many would say that if you can see Indiana across the river, as you can in Louisville, you’re not exactly in the heart of Dixie.

While their sound draws on everyone from Neil Young and Brian Wilson to Marvin Gaye, the only constant in the Jacket’s music is reverb, which emerged as a fixture in the band’s early days. “When I sing without reverb, I just hate it.” James notes. “I don’t even sit here and play without reverb. I’ve got my four-track and headphones in my bedroom in reverb, and that’s the only way I play.”

The reverb revelation came when James was trying to sing with his former band, Month of Sundays. “There was one time that I was singing through an amp at practice, and somebody left the reverb turned up and I just sang, and from the first note that came out, it was just awesome. I felt like the Righteous Brothers or something, I felt so powerful. And then I would just take that amp in the basement and sing through it.”

Catching some Z

So it’s appropriate, if accidental, that when I interview the band at a verdant Louisville park near James’ apartment, we’re gathered around a picnic table underneath a stone bridge: a big ambient space.

We pass the time talking about how the newest band members came aboard, their recording experiences and what inspired the latest batch of songs. For James, an intuitive worker who prefers making music to thinking about it, the writing springs from dissatisfaction with the state of the world. It starts with last fall’s presidential election, but it’s ultimately much bigger than that.

“I feel like I’ve been upset—and most people I know have been really upset about the way the world’s going right now,” he says. “Ever since the election, it’s been a huge knock in the head. Shit’s kind of gone weird, gone wrong. [I’m] writing songs where I just feel really upset and angry, and I don’t know what to say all the time. So the chords are just crying for what’s going on.”

Inarticulate frustration sounds like a flimsy base for songwriting. Well, perhaps it would be for another band, one that doesn’t rely on gorgeous pyramids of reverb vocals, but in “Wordless Chorus,” Z’s opening track, the song’s “ahs” get the point across better than language could.

And, of course, there’s more happening under the surface. “I feel like it takes times like these to make great changes,” James continues. “Great stuff comes out of feeling like that. That’s the thread of it; that’s the thread that runs through all of our albums—being in a place you might not want to be, knowing there’s always power to change it, to get out of your situation, to use it for good.”

“I was thinking about that the other day,” Koster chimes in. “It’s that struggle to keep true to your identity and not lose it. Some of [Jim’s] cultural observations are kind of looking at things and saying, ‘Wow, the culture’s becoming more homogenous.’ Everybody’s hip now. You get on the Internet and find out what the hip things are to be into. …That’s why Jim’s special—he’s unique, he’s a complete individual who won’t be something he’s not.”

Hanging out before the previous night’s homecoming show, James expresses his disdain for conformist cool. “We’ve all tried to be dorks deliberately,” he tells me. “We’re not cool guys. We don’t care about being cool. Being hot. Getting lots of chicks. And doing all the cool things that only Lou Reed or Iggy Pop would have done. So many people are so f---ing concerned with being so cool. And all the bands that get popular are so cool. That’s why we have always strived to be the biggest dorks we could possibly be. There are so many kids out there—so many people like us when we were kids—who love music, and also love baseball, and also love movies. They don’t care what the cool clothes are. They don’t care what the cool haircut is.”

“There’s a thread in all [Jim’s] songs,” Koster adds, “lamenting the fact that he has to struggle to keep his identity and not relate to a lot of things. That’s why I think all of us relate to it. Everyone feels like they live in their own head and are alone. I think Jim does a good job of getting across those feelings.”