My Morning Jacket: It Still Moves : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Inside the oceanic reverb that soaks every twang and sigh on It Still Moves, the third album by the Louisville, Kentucky, quintet My Morning Jacket, is a first-class acid-country Radiohead swimming slowly to the surface. The group's lack of hurry can be exasperating; some songs seem to take days to hit chorus pay dirt (the swollen-pain refrain in the Day-Glo crawl "Master Plan") and guitar-jam daylight (the midsection of "Run Thru"). But Jacket mastermind Jim James, the band's vocalist-songwriter-producer, knows the difference between wasting time and warping it, although he sings a lot about being fogged in by liquor and hopelessness. "I Will Sing You Songs" is a long bath of rolling-tide guitars, cymbal splashes and James' liquid-silver hallelujah -- Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" via Smile-era Brian Wilson. And there is a sharp, Southern-barbecue tang to the brass behind the '68-Fillmore-dream guitars in "Easy Morning Rebel." My Morning Jacket are going nowhere fast - but in all the right ways.