I'm interrupting my irregularly-scheduled posts on some of my favorite music of the last 30-odd years to bring you tunes that have been spinning around in my head. (Okay, I couldn't find my Stereolab CD that was supposed to accompany my Stereolab post.)
[My Morning Jacket's "Mahgeetah"]
My Morning Jacket's It Still Moves will no doubt be on critics' top 10 lists this year. I can't say I completely agree; the rest of the album hasn't made that much of a dent. There's little here that, say, the Allman Brothers or maybe Uncle Tupelo hasn't done before; comparisons to Neil Young, the Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Will Oldham and even the Harry Smith anthology (?) have been made, but it still sounds mostly like indie-fied guitar boogie to me.
Not that there's anything wrong with indie-fied guitar boogie, though. The album's opening song, "Mahgeetah," combines two seeming opposites; it's a rockin' slab of pure pop joy, heavy beats and lilting vocals, guitar crunch and beach twang all at the same time. It's a stunner of a track, one that lifts you off your feet.
(And while everyone above is quintessentially American -- okay, not Neil, but he's arguably one of the greatest interpreters of the American Experience, period -- the image the song calls up for me is oddly, incongruously Filipino. In my head I see a small rural town in the provinces, and an open-air basketball court with strands of Christmas lights everywhere. Shy young men in short sleeved shirts. Young women in summer dresses. Stars and crickets and the full moon above. A wind to keep the mosquitoes away.)