My Morning Jacket - LC Pavilion, 10-6

For the first five or six years of My Morning Jacket’s existence, the band was on the low diving board, bobbing up and down to prime the board and giving consistently good--sometimes great--performances. But in the last few years, Jim James has taken his band up to the platform high above the pool with even more success, plunging My Morning Jacket into the hard-to-reach category of an “important” rock band.

The old My Morning Jacket built its sound on Southern rock archetypes, importing Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd into a new indie Americana led by James’s trusty abandoned-grain-silo tenor. (And that ample use of reverb has inspired countless copycats in recent years, from Band of Horses to Fleet Foxes.)

But starting in 2005 with the release of Z, MMJ went out of its Kentucky comfort zone, opening the album with a bubbly bass line and adding some psychedelic art-rock into its pop songs, while still remaining accessible. This year’s Evil Urges stretches the band even further, at times conjuring the Flaming Lips and Prince but still not forgetting its roots.

Monday night’s concert at the LC Pavilion--billed as “An Evening with My Morning Jacket”--drew heavily from those last two albums, along with some choice morsels from the past. What astounded me most as I watched James twirling across the stage, his curly mop flopping around him, was how well MMJ has merged their two identities into one conjoined, unstoppable rock beast.

October 6 seemed a little late to have an outdoor show at the LC, but the crisp, chilly air ended up creating a nice autumnal atmosphere. Right from opening number “Evil Urges,” the band appeared to be enjoying themselves quite a bit, as well. Throughout the night James used a litany of quirky, complimentary adjectives to describe Columbus and the crowd: powerful, elegant, beautiful, fragrant, faithful and “luxurious, like finely conditioned hair just out of the shower.”

The set list was one that made me realize just how many great songs this band has, from “Gideon” and “Lay Low” off Z to “Mahgeetah” and “Golden” from It Still Moves, plus a lot of solid new ones like “I’m Amazed” and “Librarian.” Even “Highly Suspicious,” which I viewed as sort of a failed experiment on Evil Urges, was an unexpected surprise, with James channeling his inner Prince for a funky, falsetto bookend to “Wordless Chorus”--one of several tunes that found the bearded singer sporting a cape. (I know, I know. Sounds stupid, right? I’m not sure how he made a cape cool, either.)

Lots of these songs opened up and provided space for the band to jam, which is often a dose of Ambien for me. But these guys could give workshops on how to jam successfully, a workshop many bands need (cough, Black Crowes, cough cough). “Dondante” was the only song that lost a little of its energy in the instrumental section. Others, like “Off the Record,” featured an extended ending with spicy guitar that only enhanced the song’s feeling.

But “One Big Holiday,” the “Free Bird” for the new millennium, was the Flying V guitar song the whole crowd was waiting for, and MMJ didn’t disappoint in the encore. Even though the band probably doesn’t let a show go by without playing the song, they performed it like it was the inaugural night--just another reason an evening with My Morning Jacket is an evening well spent.

CD101 Summerfest 2008

This year’s CD101 Summerfest was probably worth the money, but that’s not saying much since it was only $5. You’d be hard-pressed to put together a festival with seven bands for $5 (about 71 cents per band) and have it not be worth the cash.

The evening was mostly a disappointment, though, especially compared to last year’s great performances by Silversun Pickups, Sea Wolf and Miranda Sound. VHS or Beta played an underwhelming set last year, but for some reason the band was back this year to headline the main stage at the LC Pavilion, and Saturday night’s set wasn’t any better. In fact, it was worse.

The Louisville band is apparently content to recycle ’80s pop in a danceable form, mixing glossed-up post-punk (minus the spidery guitars) and Robert Smith vocals (minus the drippiness, adding some vocoder). Every song in the set sounded familiar, and not just because I heard most of them last year. It just felt recycled.

The instrumental numbers were no exception. I thought I was listening to muzak versions of other songs--like watching an infomercial for the “Instrumental ’80s.” Much of the crowd seemed to concur, as people trickled to the exit in larger numbers as the set went on, leaving a sparsely populated lawn.

Philadelphia’s Dr. Dog warmed up the stage for VHS or Beta, and while the fivesome didn’t set it on fire by any means, it was a performance worth seeing. For the most part, I preferred the songs the bassist sang--he’s got a howler of a voice that translates better live, especially on “The Beach” and “The Ark,” which was the best song of the night and deserving of the radio play CD101 has been giving it.

Dr. Dog played a lot of older stuff, which is unfortunate because most of the newer stuff had the most energy and sounded freshest. Also, everyone but the bassist was fairly distant and aloof, and that created a barrier that didn’t need to be there. Fortunately for Dr. Dog, the band’s swaying melodies juxtaposed with bouncy grooves helped to make up for it.

Darker My Love had a similarly indifferent stage presence. Maybe they were pissed off at being relegated to the tiny side stage, and deservedly so. Why put a psychedelic band with Big Muff guitars and huge, fuzzy bass lines on the side stage and put acoustic two-piece honeyhoney on the main stage? There’s probably some sort of logistical reason for this, but switching those two would have put both bands in a more natural setting.

Despite looking quite bored, Darker My Love rocked out nicely, albeit inconsistently. Songs without a distinct vocal hook got lost in a way that they don’t on record, but others--like “Blue Day,” “Two Ways Out” and “Talking Words”--rang true and trippy.

Honeyhoney ended up being my favorite band of the night, and previously I didn’t think much of the girl-guy duo. The band’s debut EP, Loose Boots, is a little too polished for my liking, but live the two stripped it down to Ben Jaffe on bass drum and acoustic guitar and Suzanne Santo occasionally accompanying on violin and banjo. Jaffe threw in some nice vocal harmonies throughout, but Santo’s sexy, jazzy voice was the set’s highlight--like a younger, salacious version of Over the Rhine’s Karin Bergquist.

Turning the Smashing Pupmkins’ “1979” into a jazzy vamp was a cool twist, and “I Go to Work” showed Santo’s blunt and playful sense of humor. Honeyhoney was also the most stylistically divergent band on the bill--something the fest could have used more of.

There’s not much good I can say about ism and Tickle Me Pink. Ism was like a less proggy, less talented version of Muse. Every song sounded the same as the one before. It reminded me of a high-school band that just discovered Boss guitar-effects pedals, complete with awkward silences during equipment failures. “Sacred Cows,” the CD101-pimped tune, was borderline horrible. Fittingly, the set ended with a song called “Give it Back,” which is what I wished the band would do with the previous 20 minutes of my life.

Tickle Me Pink--winning the award for worst band name of the festival--played super-bland emo songs with repetitive choruses that were usually screamed by the lead singer (who sported mid-’90s Jennifer Aniston hair). The parts without distortion highlighted his severe vocal limitations, and the lyrics were just atrocious. Exhibit A (“Go Die”): “It’s been so long since I saw you/But it’s been the time of my life/Now that it’s all over/I want you to go die, die.”

I missed Columbus opener the Lost Revival, but even without seeing them, I can pretty much guarantee they were better than ism and Tickle Me Pink.

Like last year, I still have to give kudos to CD101 for putting lesser-known bands on a cheap bill and giving them the opportunity to play for more people than they’re used to. (One example: Dr. Dog was scheduled to play the 300-capacity Basement recently; the band played to a heck of a lot more warm bodies than that on Saturday night.) The festival is also a good annual reminder that we’re lucky to have an independent rock station at all.

Let’s hope next year’s lineup, though, is worth a little more than $5.

Spoon with Great Northern, Buffalo Killers and Happy Chichester, LC Pavilion, 12-3

“Indie rock” has become somewhat of a meaningless term over the last few years, with plenty of bands who are by no means independent being tagged with the descriptor. The term also assumes all rock on an independent label must sound similar by nature of its origin. Such is the difficulty and danger of attempting to put music into neat little categories. But, the term has begun permeating the mainstream, finding its way into movies, TV shows and dozens of commercials aimed at the coveted 18-30 demographic. And when a genre is that pervasive and accepted, it makes sense to use it, misnomer or not.

Spoon embodies the indie rock ethos, and I for one am glad to see the band gain in popularity the last couple of years after toiling away since 1994. Spoon didn’t have a Garden State to catapult it to the level of the Shins, or a crossover single delivered to the masses like Modest Mouse (“I Turn My Camera On” came close), but the popularity of the indie rock genre and the band’s clever re-inventions on a succession of albums (and locally, a good amount radio airplay) have enabled Spoon to reach that first tier of indie rock recognition.

Britt Daniel is Spoon. He’s an unassuming guy, to the point where he walked through the crowd beforehand without most people ever noticing. He’s like the nondescript guy from every college dorm who keeps a low profile and always looks like he just woke up. But the style he has created for the band is truly his own, with a scratchy-but-soulful voice scraping away over sharp, quick guitar and piano. It’s as if every instrument in Spoon is part of the rhythm section, which creates plenty of space for quirky musical gestures and avoids claustrophobic tendencies.

Daniel and his Austin, Texas, cohorts communicated almost all of that uniqueness live, making the show a real treat for longtime fans and first-timers. While the set was heavy on cuts from this year’s confusingly titled Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon broke out some oldies, too, opening the show with a great version of “If You Say So” from 1996’s All the Negatives Have Been Destroyed. Daniel played his guitar like a jackhammer and sang with passion on danceable burners such as “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb,” “Rhthm & Soul” and “Don’t Make Me a Target,” with lyrics about “nuclear dicks with dialect drawls” who “come from a parking lot town.”

There were a couple of weak points. “The Ghost of You Lingers” could have been cut from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and the same went for the live set. The horn section on “The Underdog” was sorely missed. Also, the person manning the sound board perpetually added short blasts of reverb and echo to Daniel’s vocals. I assume this was at the request of the band, but it came off as unnecessary and distracting--almost as distracting as the drunken college student who repeatedly attempted to talk to me about the 2008 presidential election during the concert, then asked if I would return something to Global Gallery for him. ($5 tickets = more beer money = muchos drunkenness.)

But the negatives shouldn’t be overstated. Spoon saved up a whole lot of energy for a taut encore that ripped through tunes such as “Japanese Cigarette Case” and “I Turn My Camera On,” ending the night strong and cementing its place among indie rock royalty.

Three other bands opened the show, and I was most impressed by the atmospheric pop of Great Northern. The crowd as a whole never really seemed to buy into it, which made the band’s set seem a little more ho-hum than it should have. Great Northern played a new song that the band admitted wasn’t fully complete yet, and it showed, but otherwise the songs were well-crafted with borderline boy-band melodies disguised by lots of Silversun Pickups-style guitar feedback, keys, synth and Rachel Stolte and Solon Bixler’s lush vocals. It was super-catchy stuff, and the arrangements and ambience kept things interesting.

Buffalo Killers, a three-piece from Cincinnati, played southern garage rock in the vein of Kings of Leon with louder guitars and lots more hair. The bluesy riffs evoked Hendrix while brothers Zachary and Andrew Gabbard emitted phlegmy yowls over top. I couldn’t help thinking how great the songs would be on Guitar Hero. Local stalwart Happy Chichester opened the show solo with some uptempo acoustic numbers and moody piano, and his tunes just keep getting better. Still, I again lament the fact that performing solo has become the art of how to use a loop pedal. Solo musicians: It’s OK to just use a guitar and your voice. No one will think less of you.

Smashing Pumpkins, LC, 10-11

Billy Corgan has always been a great frontman, with or without James Iha and D'arcy. Last night's show was heavy on the Zeitgeist material with a few too many instrumental lulls, but it showed that Corgan has brought back the Pumpkins' rock-and-roll mentality. Although I was wishing for more Siamese Dream material than "Today" and "Hummer," the band put on a great show and made me realize I don't just like Smashing Pumpkins for nostalgic reasons. Review coming in The Other Paper next week.