Chocolate and Ice

VINYL FORMAT. My Morning Jacket, the Louisville, Kentucky, outfit that continues to defy categorization, follows their critically acclaimed and commercially respectable At Dawn and The Tennessee Fire albums with 35 minutes of southern blues, Americana and dreamy psychedelia. My Morning Jacket's appeal stems from the haunting, raw vocals of lead singer and guitarist, Jim James. While simultaneously channeling the spirits of both Neil Young and Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, James leads his musical cohorts along a journey of reverb-drenched melodies, velvet, melancholy lyrics, and instrumentation that combines old country swagger with classic pop sentimentality. Live, My Morning Jacket turns the proverbial amp up to 11 and rocks so hard that, to quote a fan website, "shards of glass from broken beer bottles thrown against the chickenwire amidst a bar-room brawl only add to the rhythmic mayhem.