IT STILL MOVES (DELUXE)

My Morning Jacket: Jim James, Johnny Quaid, Two Tone Tommy, Danny Cash, Patrick Hallahan. Recorded at Above The Cadillac Studios, Shelbyville, Kentucky. The buzz on this Kentucky band began in a low-key way with their 2001 second album, AT DAWN, but they broke out to the mainstream (and garnered major-label distribution) with the follow-up, IT STILL MOVES. Like their earlier efforts, it suggests a cross between vintage Neil Young/Crazy Horse and EXILE ON MAIN STREET-era Stones, perhaps filtered through early Wilco and flavored with an eccentric touch of fellow Kentuckian Will Oldham at his most rocking. My Morning Jacket offers a raw, rootsy brand of rock that's thick with earthy, biting guitar licks; proudly uncompressed, very human-sounding drums; and keening, high-lonesome vocals that espouse an inscrutably poetic lyrical aesthetic. IT STILL MOVES is as open-ended and expansive as the American heartland from which it comes, with many of the tracks turning into lengthy epics full of shifts in mood and tempo. In this sense, one might not be entirely off-base to think of this album as Americana's answer to OK COMPUTER.