Album Review: 'Evil Urges' by My Morning Jacket

New album a hodgepodge of genre, style, quality

My Morning Jacket's "Evil Urges" appears to be the product of a band that has collectively lost its damn mind. This isn't necessarily a bad thing (though a few tracks might be), but My Morning Jacket doesn't appear to be content with being a pretty terrific alt-country, reverb-heavy, Southern-rock band; they're reaching into all sorts of other genres, too. More than a few times, this results in a pretty disjointed feeling, but it works more often than it doesn't.

That doesn't mean it isn't completely bizarre - we've got songs that sound like Donovan, '60s bubblegum pop, James Taylor, '80s hair bands and Michael Jackson (I know, I was as surprised as anyone). More distressingly, Jim James and co. have largely dropped the reverb that made "It Still Moves" and "Z" so dream-like and memorable. I respect bands for messing with their sound and all (as long as they don't become, well, lame in the process - see the last Interpol album), but some remnant of what made me like the band in the first place is always appreciated.

See, for example, the most bewildering track on the album, "Highly Suspicious," which melds an '80s hair band feel with a bit of Tom Waits and a bit of Michael Jackson. I have no idea what to make of it, and it doesn't really fit with the rest of the album.

The tracks I like the best, I must admit, are by and large the hill-country songs, simple and with few flourishes, that the band does best. See "Sec Walkin" and "Smokin from Shootin," two excellent tracks that remind us, in spite of a few spots now and then, that My Morning Jacket can still bring the Southern rock better than just about anyone. The title track, "Evil Urges," in which James helpfully reminds us in a falsetto that is atypically alarming for him that "evil urges, baby / are part of the human race," brings the greatness as well.

But the anthemic "Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt. 2" and the soft storytelling of "Librarian" are unrivaled in any of My Morning Jacket's previous output. It's worth listening to the weaker tracks (or the fairly decent tracks that don't really make much of an impression, like "I'm Amazed," "Look at You" and "Remnants") to get to these two gems. "Librarian" is a gentle, haunting Donovan-type ballad that marks the first reasonably serious use of the term "Interweb" I've encountered anywhere, while also lamenting the beauty of a librarian, spoiled, as James sings, by her own self-image (and drawing a comparison to Karen Carpenter, "another lovely victim of the mirror"). "When God gave us mirrors," he sings, "he had no idea."

"Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt. 2," meanwhile, is bombastic where "Librarian" is subdued. It seems like the kitchen-sink track on an album that feels like a kitchen-sink album, as the song essentially serves as a reprise of the "Pt. 1" track, with the addition of synthesizers, disco-style beats and choirs. If that sounds over-the-top, it is, but in the most excellent way.

If it sounds like I have no idea what to make of this album, even after having listened to it many, many times … well, that's true. But the high parts are high enough to give this a recommendation. You can always skip past the really weird parts.