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.