My Morning Jacket @ CMAC

Been nearly two years since I rang in the new year with MMJ, but I feel like I spent a good amount of time with Jim James this month since he played with everyone and anyone at the Newport Folk Festival (more on that in a long overdue review, hopefully soon.)

Such a solid rock concert. It just had it all. The highs, the lows, the quiet, the loud, the fist pumping, the head banging, sing-alongs, and lots and lots of smoke. I know the album is a couple of years old, and that they're not touring on it currently, but still, it was well over an hour into the show before they busted out the first tune off Evil Urges. There aren't too many other major label bands that wouldn't be pumping their newest material. All well and good by me, I didn't really love that album. The covered the most ground from the albums Z and It Still Moves, including I Will Sing You Songs, which is simply one of the best tunes ever written. Beautiful. They also played a new one called Circuital, which was quite good, and kind of meandered over a couple of different themes. Once it returned to the first theme at the end, I thought, this sounds like something I know. Oh yeah, it was from this song! So it was instantly familiar.

They tacked the jam section of Run Thru onto the end of Smoking From Shootin, which, while it was damn good, I wasn't too thrilled about it. The ending section is so good it just needs to be extended, no need to borrow an ending from Run Thru. They added a great little end jam for Gideon and it sounded great. Do the same for Smoking.

The New Pornographers, nearly unannounced (seriously, where was the promotion on that one?), opened up. I got a much later start than intended and missed a good portion of the set. Arriving late, the fact that just a couple hundred people were actually even there to see it, and that the local paper was totally wrong about Neko Case reuniting with them for this show made it hard to get into for the little that I caught. I don't listen to them much and was a bit unimpressed the first time I saw them a few years ago, though every time they started up another song I said, oh yeah, this is a good song. So they played they're hits I guess.

Rollin Back (intro)
The Way That He Sings
Gideon
Mahgeetah
Anytime
Tonite I Want to Celebrate With You
Golden
Circuital
It Beats 4 U
Wonderful (The Way I Feel)
I'm Amazed
Dancefloors
I Will Sing You Songs
Dondante
Smokin From Shootin
(end of) Run Thru
Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt.2

Encore
Wordless Chorus
Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt.1
Off The Record
One Big Holiday