The Bowery Presents

Terminal 5 upcoming shows

My Morning Jacket
official website
myspace
“There’s a theme of moral confusion that runs through the whole record,” says Jim James, frontman of My Morning Jacket, explaining the title of the band’s new album, Evil Urges. “The world today is such a confused place. Things that people think are good values are obviously twisted, but there are other things considered evil that obviously aren’t. There is real evil out there, but Evil Urges is about how all of these things that you’ve been told are evil really aren’t, unless they’re actually hurting something or somebody.”

It’s ambitious territory for the group’s fifth full-length studio album, and it’s matched by the most far-ranging, surprising, and satisfying sounds of their career. From the freak-funk electro-slam of “Highly Suspicious” to the contemplative “Sec Walkin’,” which could almost be a Nashville standard, on Evil Urges, My Morning Jacket display the scope and fearlessness that demonstrates their growth into one of the world’s great rock & roll bands.

One key to attaining these new heights was a change of scenery. The band recorded their first three albums—the independent releases The Tennessee Fire (1999) and At Dawn (2001), and their 2003 ATO debut It Still Moves—in their home studio outside of Louisville, Kentucky. These records established the signature MMJ sound, mixing soaring harmonies with cascading, psychedelic guitars, and drenching the whole thing in head-ringing reverb. For their last studio album, 2005’s widely acclaimed Z, they headed to Allaire Studios at the foot of the Catskill Mountains. Working with producer John Leckie, they crafted a more eclectic blend of sounds, bringing James’s vocals further forward and adding reggae, soul, and pure pop into their gumbo.

This time, though, they opted for a different kind of setting, recording the bulk of Evil Urges in midtown Manhattan’s Avatar Studios. “We wanted to deliberately try to make ourselves uncomfortable and shake it up,” says James. “I feel like New York is just limitless possibility—you never knew what you’d see on the way to the studio, every morning was an adventure.”

James recalls coming to Avatar one morning and hearing a subway station full of people singing along to a street musician singing Bill Withers and Hall and Oates songs. Guitarist Carl Broemel says that one day he got onto the train in Brooklyn, and the car “filled up with a thousand Santa Clauses.”

The energy and intensity of the city found its way into MMJ’s playing. All five members of the band independently came up with the word “urgency” when asked to describe the feeling of the sessions, which were co-produced by James and Grammy-winner Joe Chiccarelli.

Not that this focus made the recording any less fun—“it was nice to be around people for a change,” says bassist Two-Tone Tommy, “we’ve always been so secluded.” (The big-city setting, however, didn’t determine all of the sounds on Evil Urges; Tommy notes that he came up with some of his bass parts in his yard while he was on his riding mower.)

What instantly jumps out of the Evil Urges grooves is the power of the band’s rhythm playing, especially the jacked-up crunch of the opening salvo—the title track, with its Philly-soul-flavored strings and high harmonies, into “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream (Part One)” followed by “Highly Suspicious.” It brings to the surface a love of hip-hop and R&B that MMJ has always claimed, but never revealed so explicitly.

“I feel like rhythm is kind of forgotten in a lot of rock music, but also that arrangement can be forgotten in a lot of hip-hop and current R&B music,” says James. “Everybody is traveling along this dangerously segregated path, and I was wanting to incorporate all different types of stuff.” The centrality of the beat, he says, is just as important on the quieter songs as the monster jams—“it’s all unified by this bottom-end thing.”

Other songs on the album illustrate a new maturity in James’ writing. “Librarian” is the most straight-ahead narrative composition in the MMJ catalogue. “I’m not normally a storyteller songwriter, but that’s just what came out,” says James. “The kind of person I’m attracted to is someone that is not projecting themselves that way, so I always felt the whole ‘sexy librarian’ concept is just hilarious, and also really true.” (“Someone should make a movie out of that one,” says Broemel.)

And fear not, rock & rollers: My Morning Jacket has in no way abandoned the guitar frenzy so beloved by their fans. The blitzkrieg garage assault of “Remnants” and “Aluminum Park” blast as hard as anything they’ve ever done, and “I’m Amazed” features James and Broemel’s thrilling, soaring tag-team playing. James’ voice, meanwhile, has grown stronger and more fluid than ever, able to convey intimacy or howl at the rafters.

This broad palette of sounds and styles first became clear when the fivesome convened in Colorado last year and listened to the demos of almost thirty new songs that James had worked up. “When I heard ‘Highly Suspicious,’” says
keyboardist Bo Koster, “I knew then, OK, anything goes, there’s no stopping this.”

Drummer Patrick Hallahan adds that the band wasn’t intimidated by the demands of this new batch of music. “It really challenged all of us to play differently,” he says. “There was lots of exploration, lots of beautiful mistakes.”

Evil Urges marks a new high point for a band that is proudly, impressively evolving. Z was a breakthrough for My Morning Jacket, really their first attempt to use the studio to do more than just capture their incomparable live sound (as documented on the mesmerizing live 2006 CD and DVD releases, both titled Okonokos). This album, though, extends that sense of experimentation and aspiration—and Jim James gives credit to his bandmates for the accomplishment.

“I’m pretty controlling, because I know what I want to do and how I want things to sound,” he says. “But they’re so good at working with me, and chilling me out and making my dreams come true—and then always making everything sound even better.“
Holly Miranda
official website
myspace
How 27 year-old Holly Miranda arrived at The Magician’s Private Library is a tale every bit as wild as the record’s otherworldly title suggests. It’s a story of overcoming zealots and dodging mobsters. It takes in small-scale fraud and subterfuge. It wouldn’t have been possible without Belinda Carlisle, Trent Reznor and one of the 21st century’s preeminent creators of sound: album producer Dave Sitek.

The story of the LP’s recording is equally compelling. Made before Holly had a record deal, during a month’s sessions at the TV On The Radio man’s Staygold studio in Brooklyn, it sees it’s makers starting at 7pm and recording straight through until 9 am. Every night. Holly picks up the story: “My rehearsal space was down the hall. Dave was sleeping on site. We slept all day, recorded all night for about three weeks. It was a pretty intense experience. If my prior recording sessions were school, this was like getting a master’s."

The end result, as you’ve probably heard, is one of the most enthralling records of 2010. From the fantastical spell of ‘Forest Green Oh Forest Green’ to the horn-laden atmospherics of ‘Joints,’ The Magician’s Private Library is a record intent on taking you on a journey. It’s a record equally in love (‘Waves’) and in dreams ('Sweet Dreams', 'Everytime I Got To Sleep', 'Sleep On Fire'), dark, bold and sonically ambitious – horns & beats, MPC & strings, synths & bells & reverb, all here.

Dave Sitek and Holly Miranda first met 5 years ago in New York City. "Dave was in the process of building his studio, next door to my rehearsal space and Headgear Studios (where he recorded the first Yeah Yeah Yeahs & TV On The Radio records). We just met hanging out the lobby. We became friends and I’d bring him demos I was recording at home. Sometimes he’d make requests for songs. It started with a cover of ‘God Damn The Sun’ by the Swans. And then we went back and forth for years like that.

“There was an idea we’d make an album together one day, but between our touring schedules and figuring out how to pay for it, it wasn’t easy y’know? Eventually, when we finally made it into the studio, I had about 40 demos I'd recorded at my apartment, or on the road in the back of the van.”

One of the songs, ‘Sleep on Fire,’ was inspired by a friend in the building who was asleep in his bed when fire broke out in the apartment below. “Luckily, someone was awake in the living room and carried him out,” she says, “When they were able to get back into his apartment they found that only the spot beneath his bed had burned, had actually fallen through to the floor below. That image always haunted me. So the song’s about not wasting your time here. Sleeping like your bed is on fire."

As for The Magician’s Private Library itself, just where is this bewitching place described in the title? How can we find it?

“’The Magician’s Private Library’ could be anything and anywhere….” Holly begins, “But I got the title from my schizophrenic Uncle, my Dad’s little brother who I’ve always been really close to. We were on a boat ride one day and I cued up ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’.’ It was the first time my Uncle--who’d been in a mental institution since he was 23--had heard that album. It got to the middle of the record, y’know, the part where the guy is really laughing? And there’s lot of background talking and I was kind of like…maybe this wasn’t the best thing to be playing for my Uncle Ronnie. So I stopped and asked him what he thought of the album. He turned to me and said ‘I think it sounds like the magician’s private library!’. That was 5 years ago now, and I’ve always had it in mind for the album title. The record is actually dedicated to him.”

But before Magician’s Private Libraries, La Blogotheque sessions and Vanity Fair shout-outs, prior to support slots with The XX, Friendly Fires and The Antlers, in advance of rave write-up’s in Dazed & Confused, the New York Times, album cameos from TV On The Radio members Kyp Malone and Jaleel Bunton - there was church. “I went to church, five days a week for 14 years,” Holly reveals with a hint of a southern accent courtesy of her childhood, split between the state of Tennessee and her birthplace in Michigan.

“I wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music. The movies were a no-go. I didn’t have cable, I didn’t have MTV - certain cartoons were deemed demonic - like The Smurfs! Motown was actually OK, because my parents had grown up in Detroit.”

In a house where music was deemed devilish, Holly had to find other ways to get her hands on this particular contraband. It came via her older sister, who’d established quite the racket ripping off a US CD subscription service (Columbia House) by getting free CDs sent to her house under pseudonym’s like Belinda Carlisle. “My sister’s seven years older than me so she’d come home stoned and crash out, I‘d go in her room with a flashlight and steal CD’s to listen to…that was the first time I heard The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, Elvis and Aretha Franklin.” Not that this arrangement lasted too long…

“One day my Dad found the CD’s. He read the Nine Inch Nails lyrics about fucking the devil in the backseat of your car, broke that CD in half and made my sister go to a record store and sell the rest!”

Within a few years, a 16 year old Holly had decided she’d had quite enough of Detroit and headed to NYC. She crashed at her sister’s pad and started playing around the city. The good news: This led to her first record deal. The bad news: unfortunately, it was with the mafia, funded by their profits…

“I figured out I wasn’t really signing with the label they said I was,” she explains “and the contract they wanted me to sign was total bullshit. The lawyer THEY appointed for me advised me NOT to sign the deal! When I didn’t, they told me that I’d never work in the music industry again, made some threats... I went back to Detroit for a few months to hide out and started working on new music. That was a pretty eye opening first experience to have with the entertainment industry.”

Having avoided the horse’s head in the bed treatment, Holly not long after formed The Jealous Girlfriends, ran into Dave Sitek in that hallway, goes solo, and well, you know the rest…
American Express — Are you a card member?

© 2010