On a cold fall Thursday night in downtown Brooklyn, My Morning Jacket set up shop at the gorgeous Paramount on October 16th, for the first of their three sold-out shows. Thursday night’s offering was billed as a special twentieth anniversary celebration of the MMJ’s career breakthrough, Z.
This was the third of five special shows that the band is performing to showcase the record (Morrison, Colorado, August 15, Los Angeles, August 19, with Chicago, October 26, and Atlanta, November 1), and MMJ is making these concerts must-see events. The evening began with Balthvs, the Bogotá, Colombia outfit, delivering a mix of psychedelic, funky rock as their spacey, dance-laden tunes swirled while the crowd filed in.
The pristine looking/sounding theater was the perfect platform for the evening as, Jim James (lead vocals, guitar), Carl Broemel (guitar), Tom Blankenship (bass), Patrick Hallahan (drums) and Bo Koster (keys) came onstage and dove right into “Wordless Chorus” as the lights cut off and a huge disco illuminated the stage and fans. James was dancing all around, performing with energy, sounding as strong as he did decades ago when Z was first released.
The band played the album straight through, and an early musical highlight was “It Beats 4 U,” which used deep bass lines from Blankenship and heavy drums/cymbals from Hallahan to propel the song forward via a sweet groove. “Gideon” found everyone soaring while “What A Wonderful Man” used meaty riffs in arena rock style. The band added some noisy feedback before dropping into reggae for “Off The Record,” while the pipe organ keys signaled “Into The Woods”.
James broke out his flying V guitar for “Lay Low” while singing in dramatic fashion for “Knot Comes Loose”. The band stretched it out with the longest jam of the night, going almost twenty minutes on the Z, closing “Dondante,” which started out soft and swaying before building to a monster climax with saxophone accenting the rock.
After completing the album, as a cherry on top, the group played three outtakes from the record, the rarely played “Chills”, the live debut of “The Devil’s Peanut Butter” and the weepy ‘Where To Begin”. The choppy “Half a Lifetime” off of their newest release, is, built to a nice finale via cascading riffs while “Squid Ink” deployed 70’s inspired smokey grooves and synth work. The set wrapped up with “Wasted,” which segued in and out of “En La Ceremonia,” but the songs didn’t have as much of a punch as the band had hoped for.
The encore was much better, kicking off with “Tropics (Erase Traces)” that dramatically soared. The show closed with “Mahgeetah,” a late show highlight, as MMJ triumphantly ended the reflective performance. James thanked the crowd for still coming to see them after all these years, and by the crowd’s energetic reaction, they are just as happy My Morning Jacket is still playing at the top of their game.
