My Morning Jacket “Z”The Louisville group’s entire…

My Morning Jacket “Z”

The Louisville group’s entire sound gets updated on its fourth album, with mixed results. The opener, “Wordless Chorus,” is space rock that sounds like Neil Young gone dub, “Gideon” is like MMJ taking a stab at U2’s “Joshua Tree”-era majesty, and “Off the Record” imagines Pink Floyd as a reggae band. Yet it’s somehow not as weird as it sounds, which is part of the problem. The disc keeps the intriguing experimentation at an awkward distance.

Best track: The piano on the spare, spectral “Knot Comes Loose” keeps it from drifting off into an ethereal void of mood over melody.

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Edited by Curt Wagner ([email protected]) and Victoria Rodriguez ([email protected])