[rating=3.50]
Following the iTunes exclusive Live from Las Vegas – Exclusively at The Palms; Celebración De La Ciudad Natal is the second live EP My Morning Jacket’s released just this year. Recorded in Louisville, Kentucky, at their hometown record emporium Ear X-tacy and Waterfront Park (the dual reference to the meaning of the title), this approximately forty-seven minute release is available only at indie record stores, whose customers no doubt form the source of the band’s greatest loyalty.
The title track of last year’s studio release, Evil Urges, sounds forced until the band kicks in at high gear toward the end of the performance in a high-speed country reel. In contrast, "Highly Suspicious" works because it’s tongue-in-cheek–though two minutes of it as a segue to a superior tune would be preferable, at least until you hear Carl Broemel shredding to beat the band (so to speak).
Celebracion, however, is a mix of ‘new’ and ‘old’ material and it’s on "Gideon" from Z that MMJ elevates their performance to a higher-level altogether. Jim James wails his heart out before a carefully controlled ending that nicely sets up the acoustic arrangement of "Where to Begin” including this inspirational verse: “…always startin’ over but somehow I always know here to begin…" the melancholy of that sentiment finds an echo in the forlorn pedal steel.
In much the same understated bittersweet vein, the well-wrought combination of self-analysis and character portrait called
"Librarian" is much more effective outside the context of the overstimulation of the last studio album. My Morning Jacket attains genuine majesty by the time "Phone Went West" is over, remaining in similarly rarified air during "Dondante,"
If seven tracks can’t really conjure up the sensation of MMJ live, it’s enough to placate the devoted and entice the yet-to-be-converted. Besides which, the clear booming recorded sound of a truly exceptional rock and roll band is a great pleasure in itself.
