Inspired by Tim Byron (www.livejournal.com/users/o_song), I will wank on about my top ten favourite albums of the year in backwards order.

09. My Morning Jacket – Z


Part of my enjoyment for this album was completely ruined the copy protection on this disc. It prevented it me from listening to it on my ipod, or at work through my computer. Which means until I finally decided to buy a newer, un-copy protected version (so yes I bought this album twice) it was pretty much December.

That all said, I’m thoroughly enjoying the album, and of all the albums on this list, I’m still getting to know this album, and still excited to get to know it. It’s a great air guitar album, and much more upbeat and less spooky than It Still Moves.

Wordless Chorus sounds like nothing else. The vocals are familiar, but that spooky atmosphere echo thing, the rhythm, it’s all weird, catchy, awesome. Personal highlight is What A Wonderful Man, which fits right in with classic southern rock, just pounds you down about 2 seconds in and doesn’t let up. Squealing classic rock riffs everywhere. And the middle bit…solo and drums only! The scream in the middle. How rock!

This is MMJ’s straightest album by far. With something like Off the Record, heck it’s bordering on pop. The album ends with the gentle Neil Young-esque (of course) Dondante, all seven and a half minutes of it, and it’s spooky and eerie and brilliant.

I have no idea what the band is singing. All I know is that they’ve taken what makes them different (the reverb, the south, the beards) from most bands, and focused it and made it great with this album. It’s a shorter album, more focussed. Less jamming overall.

It’s been a while now and it looks like this album has really broken their career wide open, but they are recording a DVD where they invited the crowd to dress up as goblins and such. Let’s hope that they have the moves to match the riffs.

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