My Morning Jacket - It Still Moves (2LP) - Brown/Black Swirl Vinyl

By the time My Morning Jacket rolled out It Still Moves in September 2003 on ATO Records, they had that humid Kentucky sprawl down to a fine art. It is the band’s third album, the first with powerhouse drummer Patrick Hallahan, and the last to feature guitarist Johnny Quaid and keyboardist Danny Cash. You can hear a group at a crossroads, still deep in the reverb-drenched mystique of their early years, yet itching toward the widescreen ambition that would bloom on Z. The charm lies in that tension. It feels both road dusty and sky high, like a long drive across the American South with the windows down and the amp knobs all pointing at the stars.

Mahgeetah sets the tone straight away. Jim James’s guitar scrapes and surges, the melody hangs in the air like heat shimmer, and those vocals float above the band with that unmistakable halo. Dancefloors leans into a swampy groove, strutting without rushing. Then Golden pours in like a late arvo sunbeam, all gentle strum and warm glide. It is one of their most tender songs, and it earned a second life when Cameron Crowe dropped it into Elizabethtown, with the band appearing in the film. That moment made sense. Golden feels like a postcard from the road, equal parts romance and rest stop.

Most folks will point to One Big Holiday as the fan favourite, and fair enough. It barrels forward with clean purpose, not flashy, just locked. The riff is simple as anything, which is why it lands so hard when the band hits that lift-off. On stage it became the churn that sent fields into motion, and it still does. But the album’s beating heart might be Run Thru, a masterclass in dynamics. It starts with a bright gallop, falls into a skeletal breakdown, then rises again on Hallahan’s toms until it feels like a storm front moving over your house. The long ones tell you a lot, too. I Will Sing You Songs drifts for nearly nine minutes, never in a hurry, just letting small details accumulate. Steam Engine does a similar thing while getting even more cosmic, cycling through moods until the room feels bigger than it was a minute ago. One in the Same closes the record with a kind of hushed assurance, more candlelight than fireworks.

Sonically, It Still Moves carries the wide room sound they honed at their Kentucky base, recorded at Above the Cadillac, the band’s home turf near Louisville. Jim James produced, and the mix leaves plenty of air around the guitars and keys. The reverb is not a gimmick. It is an instrument, turning even a stray chord into something haunted. If you have only heard the 2016 reissue, it is worth knowing the story there. James and Louisville engineer Kevin Ratterman went back to the tapes, remixing and remastering the album for ATO, and the deluxe edition added outtakes and demos. The new mix nudges the vocals forward and brings a bit more definition to the low end. Some fans swear by the original’s murkier glow. Others love the added clarity. Either way, It Still Moves vinyl is a treat, and one of those records where format really shapes the feel.

Critics cottoned on at the time. Outlets like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone praised the scope, the playing, and that voice. More importantly, the album pushed My Morning Jacket out of cult status and into bigger rooms, setting up the creative swerve they would take a couple of years later. You can draw a line from these slow-burn epics to the later live monsoons that made the band festival heroes. When people talk about My Morning Jacket vinyl essentials, this is always near the top, not just for the songs, but for how completely it captures a band building its own weather system.

If you are crate digging in a Melbourne record store, this is the one you pull when you want guitars to feel like weather and not just texture. The original pressing has its swampy charm, and the 2016 remix gives you a cleaner window. Either will do the job on a Sunday afternoon or at 2 am with the lights low. If you prefer to buy My Morning Jacket records online, plenty of shops stocking vinyl records Australia wide keep this in print, and it pairs nicely with the rest of the My Morning Jacket albums on vinyl. However you spin it, It Still Moves remains exactly what its title promises. It still moves. It still lifts. It still lingers.