Halloween is an interesting release day for music and DVDs and even more interesting for a group whose only other live album was, whether coincidentally or brilliantly marketed, recorded on Halloween a few years ago. My Morning Jacket’s Okonokos double-disc live album has been out for about a month now but their concert footage DVD release drops today. It is the visual companion to the live album that shares the same name, and the band’s first distributed concert footage and DVD.
To try and explain the name Okonokos is an impossible task; the title is a made-up representation of front-man and guitarist Jim James’ objective artistic concept. The title is really more of a question than anything, and stays definitely unanswered through the course of the film.
In a unique way, it is a film. The start of the DVD opens to an old Victorian-style home hosting a candle-lit party in the night. A horse drawn carriage pulls up and drops off a top-hatted and mustachioed guest, and he’s ignored and scorned as he tries to make his rounds greeting the other people at the party. For some reason, his voice is inaudible despite his efforts at speech, and he is later mesmerized by the appearance of a large white alpaca. The two are mostly ignored, so they leave to go walk in the foggy woods. They see a bright white light and hear sounds alien to the melancholy forest, then find themselves inside the concert hall as My Morning Jacket begins the first song from their newest studio album, Wordless Chorus.
The focus switches to a wide and slowly zooming shot of the theater; a huge concert hall that’s totally full, balconies included, and decked out with chandeliers and moody lighting. The wall behind the stage is painted with tall dark tree trunks, and vines weave down and across the stage from all angles. Owls perch on the amplifiers and keyboards, and the band starts to move about the stage with its new song.
It sounds incredible. The DVD boasts Dolby Digital 5.1 Sound, but even the basic stereo setting sounds like a studio album. Concert DVDs are infamous for drawing attention to a band’s inability to measure up to their recording studio talent but even the thick reverb the band is famous for sounds crystal clear. The mix was done by Michael Brauer (Bob Dylan, Coldplay) and perfectly accents the achievements of the concert’s visual clarity.
All too often, attendees of live recordings boast about the transcendence of quality of the live show versus its recorded presentation. Marketing also contributes to the notion that a live performance is better than DVD with devices like, “It’s as if you’re really there!” However, the dozen or so cameras that follow each band member (even the drummer), wide shots of the stage, audience perspective shots, and pans across the crowd take the viewer so much further than the concertgoer.
The changing lighting of cool colors and contrasted oranges washes each song a different way, and adds to the crashing echo of the band’s sound. When the energy is high and strobe lights are used smartly, the audience reciprocates the excitement and screams accordingly. The band’s more ethereal alt-country songs of lap steels and heavy reverb are treated with shifting purples and greens, while the rolling ankle-high smoke helps write the myth of Okonokos.
The ornate and eerie indoor location, the mood and sounds of the
Okonokos feels like a timeless performance. An impressive two hours of music is without band-to-audience banter, and the clothing the patrons are wearing mimics the transgenerational feel of the setting and its story. This adds to James’ continual emphasis on wanting to create a lasting performance, and it does exactly that. After (or while) watching it, the viewer doesn’t want to know the logistics of the performance, he or she wants to try and decide which song was done the best.
The performance is mostly new material, and by new I mean from their most recent album, Z. About half of the eighteen songs are tracks from their other three albums, The Tennesee Fire (1999), At Dawn (2001) and It Still Moves (2003). The song “O Is The One That Is Real” is from their 2002 split EP with the band Songs: Ohia (2005).
As with anything, the DVD does have its weak points. During “Mahgeetah” the band is beginning to wear down, and one of the most impressive guitar riffs seems to be over-simplified. That is, until someone working sound realized the guitar wasn’t plugged in and the problem is rectified near the end of the song. The show concludes nicely, though somewhat abruptly, with the general everybody-do-whatever-with-your-instruments-all-at-once ending, but the movie keeps going. We rejoin the sometimes mentioned party expatriate (named in the credits “A. Man”) and alpaca, and leave the concert hall to walk back to the Victorian mansion. A large bear, assumed to be a reference to It Still Moves’ and Acoustic Citsuoca’s (2004) cover art, attacks A. Man and dismembers him. Awkwardly, the party witnesses this from indoors, and somehow the concert audience sees it too.
Special features are mostly absent as well, save a silent and random photo gallery without narration. But, with a two-hour runtime for one performance, there probably wasn’t much space to fit too many extras. Instead, it’s worth watching the concert again and considering making the commute to their November shows in Austin and Dallas.
For more information, and to watch a one minute preview, visit www.mymorningjacket.com. $19.99.
