Wednesday 25/06/08 My Morning Jacket @ The Leadmill, Sheffield

Until recently famed nearly as much for their dogged determination to dodge the hairdresser’s scissors as their highly singular take on cosmic alt. country, equal parts Neil Young, Curtis Mayfield and the Muppets My Morning Jacket have become a significantly less hirsute unit since their last visit to these parts. On tonight’s evidence, though, loss of fur hasn’t in this case resulted in Samson-style weakening of powers.

Despite steadily building their fan base in the US, culminating with a sold-out show at New York’s legendary Radio City Music Hall and wowing the masses at Bonarroo festival in their native Tennessee, the Kentucky quintet remain a cult concern in Europe. Which is undoubtedly partly due to My Morning Jacket’s newfound penchant for ripping up the rulebook, illustrated by the futuristic funk and painstakingly polished stadium pop leanings of the brand-new ‘Evil Urges’ platter, which completes the skin-shedding process launched on 2005’s ‘Z’.

‘Evil Urges’ has caused predictable bafflement in the ‘if-it-ain’t-broke-why-fix-it’ sections of the music press. But the almost foolhardily eclectic genre-hopping makes glorious sense live. The bizarre, Prince-referencing techno-funk of ‘Highly Suspicious’, which on record comes across as an artistically successful two-finger salute to anyone valuing predictability over innovation, the smooth lighters-aloft sing-a-long ‘I’m Amazed’ and the pumping soft rock/disco hybrid ‘Touch Me I’m Going to Scream’, which finds frontman Jim James channelling the ghost of Kraftwerk via what looks like a homespun games console, all fit in seamlessly with old favourites ala ‘The Way That He Sings’ (criminally, the only selection aired from 2002’s ‘At Dawn’). ‘Thank You Too’s gorgeously lush soul-rock and the pedal steel-twanging country-rock of ‘Sec Walkin’, meanwhile, place the band’s retro leanings in an unmistakably modern context.

Thankfully, streamlined approach in the mane department hasn’t led to similar downsizing when it comes to MMJ’s trademark jams. Toiling away amidst smoke machine emissions of such generosity the band appears at times to mistake the packed Leadmill for the sizable sheds they frequent stateside, My Morning Jacket reverse the usual rock ‘n’ roll regulations by becoming more fearsomely intense the longer they noodle. The opening title track of album latest might remain excessively slick, James’ astonishing vocal prowess tackled by an ill-fitting falsetto. From ‘Gideon’ – an uncommonly subtle, graceful slice of stadium-bound grandiosity – onwards, though, they’re firing on all cylinders, with songs more often than not extended into sweaty workouts marked by the type of kingsize fretboard fireworks that may well have been outlawed at some point in the late 70’s.

High profile guitar-shredders of yesteryear usually weren’t this entertaining, though. Jim James hams it up unashamedly, delivering the eerie, stratosphere-scaling wails of ‘Wordless Chorus’ from the confines of a cape and easing the shiver-inducing ache of the boom-chicka-boom-paced beauty ‘Golden’ by fashioning improvised headgear from a towel. Frequent outbreaks of spirited headbanging provide welcome visual thrills. By the closing duo of ‘Anytime’ – an incredibly exciting, barely contained blast of energy – and the riff-spluttering colossus ‘One Big Holiday’ it’s clear we’re witnessing a true one-off, a band equally at home both testifying the staying power of classic rock and pushing boundaries, at their peak.