Old Sept. Blues

I could talk your ear off about My Morning Jacket, in fact I already have.

Sometimes the depth of my reaction to the music they play makes me uneasy, like something that ought to be reserved for relationships with, you know, real people. I remember standing in the Ascot Room in 2003 completely baffled that they were playing to such a small crowd (~100 hardcore fans), and hoping that eventually the audience would grow.

It has and the experience is different. My ambivalence about certain songs on Z and Evil Urges certainly plays a part, but it's also weird to be assaulted by a light show and bludgeoned by enormous stacks of speakers. McCaw Hall sounded magnificent, but nearing the two-hour mark I found myself wishing for something a little less overwhelming. I believe the quiet parts are now generally louder than they were five years ago, but I could be wrong. It's also harder to ride the music to four or five monstrous peaks rather than one or two.

The prevailing feeling for me is one of an intensely intimate relationship that couldn't last at that level forever. Now it's complex and even bewildering, compulsive more than anything. Expectations are impossibly high and memories will always seem more powerful, more real than what's actually present and happening today. The music coming out of the speakers will never sound as good as the music I hear in my head--only louder.

Then again, I'd still probably give up every other amazing show this year for an enormous room full of people high-fiving each other the entire way through "One Big Holiday," or shivers from the old familiar reverb on something like "Dancefloors." It's all a little confusing.