[Today’s Young Writers entries are both reviews of My Morning Jacket’s Evil Urges. The view from sixth grade will be posted in a bit.]
My Morning Jacket Evil Urges www.mymorningjacket.com
One tends to judge what an entire CD will sound like by the first couple of songs. For My Morning Jacket’s CD Evil Urges, that does not work. With its up and down moments in the scale from “INCREDIBLE! I LOVE IT!” to “Good Lord, this song should be illegal!” in the end one tends to have a headache trying to balance out the good and bad parts of the whole CD.
First off, I would like to point out the way that, in a few songs, they seem to strain their voices. Wait. That’s an understatement. More like, “Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So La Ti DDDDDDOOOOO!!!!!”
I truly recommend that NO ONE hear “Highly Suspicious” at high volume. Not only that, but the deep, slow drawl of the “Highly Suspicious” choir is an absolutely frightful comparison to the high-pitched main singer. And you are condemned to hear the choir repeating “HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS” in weird melodramatic, want-to-be-opera-like voices chiming in your head for the rest of your day and dreams. The words make absolutely no sense. In “Highly Suspicious,” the song is batted down to the myths of hell by these very first words:
“Wasting time home alone dotting your I’s, peanut butter pudding surprise!”
I wonder how peanut butter pudding tastes?
Even still, most every song has beautiful lyrics — except “Touch Me or I’ll Scream.” Other songs like “Librarian” contained a nice rhythm and three-star words. “Remnants,” “I’m Amazed” and “Thank You Too” deserve to be mentioned among the better as well.
I now realize exactly what the great saying means about judging a book by its cover. This is a fool of a cover. It’s an incredibly gorgeous frost of gold but inside it’s cheap metal. In the end, I wouldn’t pay my money for this CD! Not over my dead body!
P.S. Please be aware of the eyes that pop out of the little boxes on the inside of the case. They will hunt you. – Evelyn Flores
This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 2, 2008.
