Here's an album that begs for vinyl, although not for the reason you might think. Certainly, My Morning Jacket's worn-in rock 'n' roll-- its starchy guitar riffs and Jim James' other-end-of-a-long-tunnel vocals-- seems tailor-made for the intimate crackle of a dusty turntable. But the concisely titled Z, the band's fourth full-length, needs to be flipped over: It has two distinct sides. Granted, most albums still rely on the two-sided format the same way most movies still rely on the three-act plot, adhering to it almost subconsciously. But I'm not entirely sure My Morning Jacket intended such a dramatic difference between these two half Zs.
As Side One begins, the presence of producer John Leckie (of Radiohead, Stone Roses, and, er, Kula Shaker fame) is immediately evident. "Wordless Chorus" launches Z with a hardscrabble sound that recalls their earlier material, suggesting that the brighter production and looser, jambandier approach of It Still Moveswas a slight detour. There are more keyboards on these songs, courtesy of new member Bo Koster, and more confident experimentation-- a little reggae, a little r&b, even a little ambient. Defiantly flaunting their rural eccentricities, My Morning Jacket once again recall the earliest of early R.E.M., before you could understand Stipe's mumbling, back when the Georgia foursome defined themselves by claiming a birthright to kudzu-covered mythology. It's not really My Morning Jacket's sound that suggests this comparison, but their willingness to let the music retain its mystery despite the risk of seeming obscure or evasive.
So Z abandons the Skynyrdisms of It Still Moves, but that album's lessons remain intact: Compared to those on previous albums, these tracks have more guitar crunch and tighter song structures. Even single "Off the Record", with its driving reggae rhythms and James' lively performance, foregoes a dueling-guitar climax in favor of an unraveling outro that sounds like Air noir. "Wordless Chorus" hinges on just what its title suggests: Jim James singing aaahs and ohhhs between verses as the band rocks around him. It's as if the entire album, not just this song, could be stripped of literal meaning, as if everything My Morning Jacket needs to say can be communicated exclusively through sound. And it works, especially at the end of "Wordless Chorus", when James breaks into a rapturous r&b yowl that recalls the Passion of the Prince.
But My Morning Jacket does have something to say. Zis a spiritual album-- or at least Side One is-- with references to religion and a few barely veiled allusions to Jesus Christ himself. "Religion should appeal to the hearts of the young," James sings on "Gideon", and guess who the bouncy "What a Wonderful Man" is about. Here's a hint: "He was leading us through the dark/ He was saying that love goes on." Even that title itself suggests an omega to some unknown alpha-- sex or death or both. These hints at larger meanings infuse the songs with a weird sense of questing adventure, as if the band is revealing its secrets only to present even more riddles.
Side Two, however, loses much of the strange steam that fuels Side One, struggling to find its momentum and bringing the album back to reality with pedestrian problems like pacing. Following "Off the Record", "Into the Woods" breaks that spell, making everything that comes after it sound a little pale and less immediate. A dark-carnival organ sets the sideshow stage for James to sing about burning kittens and babies in blenders, and the overly literal production inserts a me-oww and a wahhh into the mix, Spike Jones-style. It sounds markedly better when the band comes in halfway through, but the song still dawdles to a conclusion. As if to apologize for "Into the Woods", "Anytime" is straightforward rock, enlivened by a pogoing guitar riff and James singing himself ragged. Disregarding its low-lying bass and piano lines, "Lay Low" rises to a blandly grandstanding jam as if on autopilot, but "Knot Comes Loose" ambles along on Koster's fluttering piano rhythms.
Fortunately, Z ends with the intense, simmering "Dondante". Backed only by a casually insistent rhythm section and a barely-there guitar, James sings as if in ecstasy, before the song explodes unexpectedly into a big, desperate chorus that sounds quintessentially My Morning Jacket. Then the song simply fades out-- but extremely slowly-- into several seconds of still silence. I like to think that the vinyl edition would loop that silence like Sgt. Pepper's, posing an answer to the album's question: What comes after Z?
