My Morning Jacket
Z [20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]
ATO
Is there such a thing as a band that’s too inspired? When My Morning Jacket burst into prominence in the early aughts, they were a roaring, incandescent fireball of a band. They brought down the house in the truest sense of the cliché at clubs in and far away from their hometown of Louisville, which had previously only claimed adored but nonetheless niche indie bands like Slint, Rodan, Squirrel Bait, and Rachel’s as their own. Even in Hollywood, where I caught My Morning Jacket practically tear The Roxy and the Troudabour asunder in 2003, it seemed as if no physical space could contain their massive capital-R rock sound—not the schlocky kind that KISS and the like took ownership of and mocked into obsolescence, but rather that of the glorious, cosmos-reaching Zeppelin variety.
Indeed, MMJ’s par excellence musicianship graduated them to venues of increased size to the point that it’s now a given that they play a couple of back-to-back shows at Red Rocks every few years. Earlier this summer, they seemed as much at ease performing to 10,000 Idahoans in the state’s biggest venue—a special occasion, as original member and current Tater State resident Johnny Quaid joined his pallies for six songs—as Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan did two months prior on the same stage. The album that tested MMJ’s ability to command stages the size of the one at the Ford Idaho Center as comfortably as they did much smaller ones at The Roxy and the Troubadour was 2005’s Z, which found them tightening up their songwriting and glazing their music with synths and a chilled-out reggae sensibility.
“Divisive” would seem to be a suitable term for an album that marked such a significant shift in a band’s trajectory, but Z had nowhere near that potential effect on MMJ’s audience as the aforementioned Dylan’s “going electric” did way back in 1965. Fortunately for the Louisville band, they live in a more tolerant, open-minded age that allowed Z to not only face little backlash, but soar to commercial heights that frontman Jim James would’ve never dreamt up erstwhile. It’s even more remarkable that the album succeeded because, beyond the raucous garage-rock glory that made MMJ such standouts in the first place, James’ singularly angelic vocals stepped aside a bit to make room for higher-production sound. No bother; years later, he began issuing intimate solo albums that sated his fans’ thirst for his close-encounter style of performing.
Twenty years later, Z still stands as a milestone record in the career of MMJ, which continues to be most accurately described as a “rock band,” even if they’ve since been dogged by additional but ultimately unnecessary modifiers like “alt-country,” “psych-rock,” or “space rock.” What makes this new anniversary edition of the record special is that, with labels pumping out more reissues than ever before, ATO really did justice to the “deluxe” selling point by including 14 previously unreleased outtakes and demos—many of them recorded by James, arming Z with that bonus intimacy factor—remastered sound, and new artwork. MMJ are so proud of how it turned out that they’ve taken the unusual step of issuing one of those unearthed songs, “Where to Begin,” as a single, in addition to playing the album in its entirety at five massive venues.
What enhances the specialness of the reissue is the fact that MMJ have amassed a stunning number of essential albums that could be argued are stronger than Z: Evil Urges, The Waterfall, It Still Movies. One doesn’t need to visit a psychic to foresee that this deluxe edition of Z is likely the start of a long campaign of repackaged masterpieces by one of the most consistent rock bands of the 21st century.
