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My Morning Jacket.
It's hard to avoid giving My Morning Jacket the 'Southern' tag. The band has the long hair and accents to warrant such a label. However, Patrick Hallahan (who is probably the most heavily bearded and long haired one of the lot), is slightly offended by any attempt to pigeon hole one of Kentucky's best indie exports to appear for some time. He has every right to be: My Morning Jacket's sound has been compared to artists as diverse as The Flaming Lips, Grandaddy, Roy Orbison, and of course, the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers.
"Well to be perfectly honest with you, I don't like any handle. Just because, I don't know, that limits us into that little bitty corner," explains the drummer, in Melbourne for their first Australian tour. "We just love music, man. We want to play anything that we can possibly play, that feels right to our hearts. [Our sound is] definitely not 'Southern Rock', but everybody needs a point of reference, so there's no offence taken. We might even sound a little Southern. Where you are, your atmosphere, inevitably leaks into your art."
Until just recently, Hallahan was the newest addition to the band. Although he was childhood friends with singer/guitarist Jim James, circumstances only brought him into the band after recording their second album 'At Dawn'. But eventually the strain of touring bore down on long time members Danny Cash (keyboards) and Johnny Quaid (lead guitar, and also James' first cousin). Only a couple of months ago the pair called it quits, going back home to Louisville.
"We'll always miss Danny and Johnny and it happened on good terms. They just didn't want to tour anymore," Hallahan explains. "Knowing who they are personally, it makes total sense. And it left us in a bit of a scare there for a second, I'm sure you can imagine. I don't know... we found two guys [Carl Broemel on guitars, and Bo Koster on keys], they were the first two guys we auditioned out of ten people. Geographically they're from the same region that we're from, and they fill in the missing puzzle piece. It's too much, it really is. We really lucked out, it could have gone horribly, but it didn't."
Hallahan is goes on to speak about the friendship that has built up between former and current band mates. At times it seems like he's talking about his family. "No, that's totally true. Just by example, the guys that just left the band, they call us before tours and tell us to go get 'em. You know, it's just very close knit," he says.
Hardly fitting into the standard rock clichˇ, then, are they? "Yeah we don't really, I mean we'll definitely drink a couple of beers every once in a while," he says, with a short laugh. "I don't know... we focus on the music, that's what's important, man."
Lush and cinematic, the sound of the band's most recent album 'It Still Moves' hasn't changed all too much from previous outings, although they were able to bring more scope to the sessions, basically recording the band live along with the odd horn arrangement. It's an arrangement which approximates the experience of their famously long live shows.
Another word that readily comes to mind in describing My Morning Jacket is "reverb," which has always featured heavily in their sound. Among other techniques, James' vocals are usually recorded in a converted grain silo.
"That's the sixth member of the band!" laughs Hallahan. "It's not necessarily focussing back to an old sound, but that sound is so good. It was such a great technique for recording and it just makes everything sound so beautiful. Why not go there? It just makes sense."
I ask if they find the use of reverb limiting. "No, no," Hallahan quickly replies. "I find that it expands the chances, it brings new things into it, things that you wouldn't normally hear."
Although the recent tour only covered the eastern states, Hallahan assures me that the band is keen to return for a more inclusive tour soon. "Definitely worth every hour I spent in solitary confinement on that plane," jokes Hallahan. "It's been awesome."
Although for this band, "soon" might be a relative term. Tours of North America and the European festival circuit are on the cards for the coming months ahead, as are plans to record for a new studio album. Expect plenty of reverb.
Eddie Chan
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'It Still Moves' is out now through BMG.
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