Posts tagged with my morning jacket
before we get to todays song by land of talk, did everyone enjoy their pre-halloweekend? i know i sure did. hit up a few halloween parties on friday and saturday night attended detroits craziest halloween party in the history of the world, theatre bizarre. although at the time im writing this that hasnt yet happened, so i guess i cant really say for sure if it was awesome, but im hoping that it will be, despite being pretty chilly and whatnot [edit:it far surpassed any expectations that i tried not to have]. fortunately im going as patrick bateman from american psycho, more specifically as this facet of patrick bateman, which means im able to wear some leather gloves without comprimising the integrity of my costume.
on to the music. ive featured montreal group land of talk here before, but today we’ve got a newer song that im really digging. “may you never” is a track off their “fun and laughter” ep released a few weeks back and i cant help but love the abstract sounding intro kicking into the beat. and the fact that i love songs with fake endings doesnt hurt either (a la my morning jackets “touch me im going to scream pt II). something neat i just learned was that lead singer elizabeth powell is also the guitar player and is responsible for the little guitar solo you hear halfway through. i like rocker chicks.
land of talk – may you never
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one album that is definitely near the top of my list of upcoming releases has to be the upcoming album by monsters of folk, the cheekily-titled indie rock supergroup comprised of m. ward, jim james of my morning jacket, conor oberst of bright eyes and producer mike mogis, also of bright eyes. weve only heard a few tracks so far, but from whats been released, the album sounds very promising. the tracks seem to cover a wide range of genres and you can definitely tell that each song sort of plays off the style of one of the members of the group.
after one listen to “dear god (sincerely m.o.f.)”, its clear that this track is definitely in the key of my morning jacket. aside from the obvious fact that jim james provides most of the vocals, there are clear signs of my morning jacket all over this one. the chord changes are classic mmj, and the overall dreamy feel of the song adds to it. the exciting part about this album is the stark contrast between this song and the m. ward led “say please” and “the right place”, which, based on the 10 second youtube teaser, sounds like it will definitely be highlighting conor oberst. is this the first time musicians have posted 10-15 second teasers of upcoming songs on youtube (just search for monsters of folk)? either way, its definitely an interesting marketing strategy and one that seems to be working in this case. the cool part about their tour is they’ll be playing monsters of folk tunes, plus songs by all of their own respective “solo” acts. but im pretty sure they arent making a stop in detroit, because nobody makes stops in detroit anymore.
monsters of folk – dear god (sincerely m.o.f.)
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my morning jacket is one of those groups that sort of snuck up on me. id heard about them for a while but for some reason, i thought it was going to be some sort of mtv punk group that i hated, a la fallout boy. so imagine my surprise when i heard their album z for the first time. not even close to anything i thought it would be. then i discovered the rest of their catalog and was fortunate enough to see them at the state theater last fall, and that just sealed the deal for me. definitely a top show ever. we actually got really lucky that we even got to see them because just 3 days after our show, the group was performing another show in, i think, chicago? or somewhere around there, when singer jim james slipped and fell and had to cancel a bunch of shows in the next few weeks (i actually have no idea how many shows were cancelled).
basically if you ever have a chance to see them live, you take it and ask questions later, at which time you wont have to ask any questions. the group is a bit of a regular at bonnaroo having played 5 or 6 of the 8 years the festival has been around. the other interesting fact that comes to mind is that singer jim james (im not sure if its the rest of the band or not) makes an insanely weird cameo in the insanely weird biopic (pronounced by’-oh-pic, not by-ah’-pic) “im not there”. it took me probably an hour to realize that all the weird characters were supposed to represent a stage in bob dylans life, but seriously, that movie went right over my head, and i usually like weird movies. but i definitely remember being more confused when suddenly my morning jacket was in the old west singing a song.
there were literally millions upon millions of songs i could have chosen from their repertoire and i would have been content. but in the end, the lucky winner was “it beats 4 u”. the first reason i chose this song is because it is awesome and i think it sums up mmjs sound quite nicely. the second reason is the use of text speak in the song title. the third is because i like to think that the whistler near the end of the song is andrew bird because really who else can whistle like that in the world? but then i also think it would be a random pairing…….
……so i just looked it up, and it turns out that andrew bird AND m. ward both appear on this album, and that andrew bird has also appeared on about a million other albums. without further ado, enjoy the show.
my morning jacket – it beats 4 u
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