Album: My Morning Jacket, Circuital (V2)

Circuital opens with a gong and orchestral fanfare, appropriately so for what may be My Morning Jacket's best album.

Recorded back in their native Kentucky, it's a much warmer, welcoming affair than the variable Evil Urges, with producer Tucker Martine expertly eliciting the synergistic quality of a band in perfect harmony. Several tracks glow with the kind of ebullient charm and sincerity one hears in Fleet Foxes, particularly "Wonderful (The Way I Feel)" and the title-track's euphoric reflection on cyclicality, which finds Jim James "growing older every day, going back to my childhood ways". A similar theme drives "First Light", while elsewhere "Outta My System" deals with overcoming bad habits, and in the album's quirkiest track, what sounds like a children's chorus urges us to "Hold on to Black Metal".

DOWNLOAD THIS Victory Dance; Circuital; Hold on to Black Metal; Wonderful (The Way I Feel)