musical sketches to the table for the band to develop together, rather than finished songs.
“One of the most important things I learned from (co-producer of Evil
Urges) Joe Chiccarrelli was when he said ‘Don’t do good demos!’ Cuz if you spend too much time on a demo, it will often suck up too much of the song’s original magic,” says Jim. “I barely did demos for this record. I just kinda kept them as rough ideas, so when we all got in the studio, the songs you hear on record are actually the songs coming to life for the first time.” Circuital was largely recorded in an old gymnasium, away from the typical sterile modern studio environment, with the band facing each other in a circle, playing to each other, using great microphones and skilled engineers. This live setup allowed a lot of spontaneity, one-shot takes and an outstanding document of this band’s exceptional ensemble playing. Whether it’s Carl’s off-the-cuff solo on the title track – a great example of restrained, tasteful note choices while being tonally spectacular – or the elegant picking of Wonderful (The Way I Feel), there’s plenty to admire on Circuital. “We always try to set up and play together, like on Z we did a lot of stuff
“We’d play through a song maybe a handful of times, two or three times at most, and then we’d hit record. It kept everybody on their toes and it’s just that level of trust we have now.”
where we were all playing live. This one, it was that the space we were in wasn’t a recording studio. We set up in a circle and we kicked around the songs and we tried to record it that way as much as possible. A song like Slow Slow Tune, that was completely 100% every microphone in the same room, even the vocal, and Circuital was also 100% live. The core of it is us playing together and just hanging out in the gym,” says Carl. The sophisticated, slinky, horn-addled soul of Holdin’ On To Black Metal is
one of Circuital‘s outstanding tracks. Heavily based upon the melodies and arrangements of E-Saew Tam Punha Huajai by Kwan Jai and Kwan Jit Sriprajan (which can be found on the excellent compilation Siamese Soul: Thai Spectacular 1960s-80s Volume 2), this song is a huge bluster of spy movie score brass, youthful choral call and response and some superb 60s fuzz licks. As unexpected as it is delightful, it’s astonishing to think such an ambitious piece could’ve been drummed up in the same sessions. “That’s hilarious to me. That was one of my favourite songs. And we
‘modern’ players lately. I’m always feeling what Carl is doing and other players like M. Ward, Kyp (Malone) from TV On The Radio, Prince...” It is these kinds of kindred spirits that Jim conjures when he’s writing and helping direct the band. He’s a laid back individual who, you sense, can be very intense when applied to his craft. New album Circuital has all the hallmarks of a My Morning Jacket album – tasteful guitar playing, tackling different musical styles and, of course, the haunting howl of Jim’s voice – but there’s
worked on the rest of it and I was like man this song is not gonna be on the record. We were all just goofing around with it. Jim was like ‘it’s gonna be on it’ and we should know he’s probably right. The actual take of that song was such a lucky take. We’d finish a song in a day and the engineers were packing away for the day and we just started setting up for ...Black Metal. We pressed record and everybody else was gone. We did a couple of takes of that and we went ‘okay we’ve got the arrangement right’. Everybody came back and we started recording. We saved the other takes, thank God, because when we tried to play it well, it was terrible! It didn’t work at all. We were like ‘what?’ We just used the early take where we were still trying to get the arrangement right, just standing around and playing. Then Jim did some overdubs with the background vocals and got his vocals all dialled in and we put the horns onto it and it turned into something that had to be on there.” It also demonstrates that My Morning Jacket have become far more than a simple country rock band, as if that wasn’t clear already. There are several points where the pedal steel returns though, thanks to Carl’s discovery of the instrument, though it’s not used in a typically country way. Carl admits he’s a beginner, and he’s applying it in a way that is “ambient” and “creepy” rather than trying to step into the shoes of the jazz, country and swing legends of yore.
“Circuital is an experiment that has definitely worked…”
no sign of them settling into one groove. The new album’s ragged lo-fi folk-country tones hark back to their 1999 debut The Tennessee Fire but there’s a much wider range of emotions and a broader sonic scope than the band’s earlier early work, despite being shorter in length. Part of the reason for this is that Jim seemed to let go of the reins a little more, bringing
“It’s one of the most fun things I’ve been learning in the last four years.
The original guitar player Johnny left six years ago and they had an old pedal steel that some of the guys had fooled around with but none had tried to use it. So Jim was like ‘hey man d’ya wanna take this home?’ and I was like yeah, awesome! I had always been curious about it. I like to think of a pedal steel
pickup451
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