What’s there left to say about My Morning Jacket as a reside act? Lore and eyewitness accounts verify that they’ve all the time been mighty, whether or not overshadowing Ben Kweller and Guided by Voices as a barnstorming opener of their early days or creating their very own Mount Olympus with a career-defining set at Bonnaroo in 2008. Hell, final evening’s kickoff of their three-show Brooklyn Paramount run wasn’t even the primary time they’d performed 2005’s Z entrance to again in NYC.
As a (in some way) first-time eyewitness to their reside present myself, I might run down the usual audiovisual reportage: Jim James toggling between wavy frontman choreography (opener “Wordless Refrain”) and elephantine shredding (“Anytime”); utility wunderkind turned elder statesman Carl Broemel calmly slipping into sax mode for an prolonged album finale (“Dondante”); Patrick Hallahan’s hair-raising snare hits; the backlighting of old-school LED grids that, by means of easy triangulation, mutated a smiley face right into a constellation of the under-the-knife owl beak that graces Z’s cowl artwork.
However for those who’re a fan and even simply somebody who’s casually caught one among MMJ’s live shows prior to now, you’ve already seen the band’s craftsmanship and volcanic power on show. You don’t want somebody to extoll their in-the-flesh greatness, unparalleled as it could be and possibly has been since their inception. This morning, head nonetheless blissfully buzzing from final evening, I discover myself interested by what Z meant when it was launched 20 years in the past and what it means by means of the lens of reside efficiency in 2025.
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It could appear quaint now in a post-social media age when style obstacles have all however disappeared for music followers, however Z felt like the toughest of pivots within the early aughts. It was an evolution from three albums of rootsy jamming (most notably, 2003’s It Nonetheless Strikes) to spacey synthesizers, shorter tune lengths, and lyrics that skewed extra surrealistic (or perhaps non secular, relying by yourself non secular convictions), all of which earned MMJ the now-tired superlative of “the American Radiohead” from a number of publications.
The psychedelic detour proved to be prophetic not just for the band themselves (subsequent releases Evil Urges and Circuital would each be considered as equally and even controversially metamorphic), however a number of later acts who would fall beneath the loosely outlined umbrella of “alt nation” — at the least in some unspecified time in the future throughout their rise. Sturgill Simpson, Massive Thief, and even Kings of Leon would all come out of the gate saddled with the Americana label, solely to go a bit extra cosmic a number of albums in. And whereas MMJ actually wasn’t the primary country-adjacent act to drastically weirden their sound, Z (together with Wilco’s Yankee Resort Foxtrot) looks like the fashionable template for doing so.
The place the band’s transformation in 2005 felt purely aesthetic, nevertheless, listening to the file’s morphing sounds in a reside setting 20 years later felt contextual and thematic — a response to the chaos of contemporary historical past within the making. When James lastly addressed the group on the album’s midway level — between an additional dubbed-out “Off the Report” and extra-carnivalized “Into the Woods” — he spoke briefly in regards to the album’s significance of their profession and its relationship to New York (the band relocated from their native Louisville to the Catskills for recording). He then went on to proclaim that everybody within the ornate Brooklyn Paramount ballroom was on a brand new aircraft of consciousness collectively to rejoice peace and love.
Now, I understand how these phrases look on paper — imprecise, shamanistic, even perhaps cultish. And being invited to let unfastened and luxuriate in one’s self in an setting of rising authoritarianism isn’t precisely revelatory. However it’s more and more important amidst the concern, violence, and turbulence of 2025 and past, and James has all the time come throughout as honest in his requires concord. The brevity of his banter additionally prevented it from being condescending or sermonizing.
With all of that in thoughts, the expansiveness of Z instantly felt heavier, a reminder of the significance of staying versatile — artistically, socially, societally — so we will maintain onto some happiness in a world that none of us can predict. And by the beginning of a second, non-Z set, it turned clear that each one the assorted shards of MMJ’s prismatic id have been nonetheless there and all the time had been — previous, current, and future. Encore nearer “Magheeta” took on a bit little bit of the cybernetic freakiness of Z (the LEDs helped), the reside debut of oddity “The Satan’s Peanut Butter” off the Z twentieth anniversary version was a right away fusion of the pre- and post-Z eras, and are available to consider it, had “Off the Report” even been that dubbed out, or have been the riffs extra-muscular and mountained up? In all probability each. Even the three cuts from this yr’s is have been already seeing their accessibility give solution to amorphism.
It’s additionally value mentioning the enormous stuffed bears which have been an onstage mainstay virtually so long as My Morning Jacket have been a band. They’ve all the time been considerably totemic, with one among them famously gracing the quilt of It Nonetheless Strikes as a type of image of significant steering. However the ursine imagery was particularly palpable final evening, a specter of a previous that had by no means actually disappeared within the first place. For a legendary reside act, owl and bear are in the identical menagerie, creative pivots ultimately come full circle to blur the traces of a number of genres, and elasticity turns into a way of success — and thus a way of survival — for band and viewers alike.
Get tickets to the My Morning Jacket’s upcoming tour dates — together with extra full Z performances — right here. See a full picture gallery and setlist from the band’s Brooklyn Paramount live performance under.
My Morning Jacket Setlist:
Z:
Wordless Refrain
It Beats 4 U
Gideon
What a Fantastic Man
Off the Report
Into the Woods
Anytime
Lay Low
Knot Comes Free
Dondante
Chills
The place to Start
Half a Lifetime
The Satan’s Peanut Butter
Squid Ink
Wasted / En La Ceremony / Wasted
Encore:
Tropics (Erase Traces)
Smokin’ From Shootin’
Die For It
Mahgeetah
