Midweek Music Break: My Morning Jacket, “Circuital”

In the category of bands building a career while I was looking the other way… I offer you the subject of this week’s music break: the title track of My Morning Jacket’s upcoming album Circuital.

I stumbled upon the band and this pretty static video while looking for something else. Whatever one makes of the lyrics (there’s some dispute as to what the lyrics actually are), the instrumentation and the vocal harmonies and effects, umm, well, they mesmerized me. Great, great sound. Won’t surprise me if I’m tapping out this rhythm on the steering wheel and the floor beneath my desk for days, without even being aware I’m doing so.

Lyrics (to the extent that anyone seems to have pieced them together):

Circuital
(My Morning Jacket)

Spinning out, gracefully
Going nowhere, quickly
I am older, day by day
Still going back to my childhood way

Circuital
Round and round patiently
Getting lost by the guide
And I’m all worked up over nothing

Circuits
All in and out
Connect my body
Deep into the ground

Circuits
Connect the Earth to the moon
And link our heavenly bodies
Not a moment too soon

Well you can fling open the windows
Or you can board them up
Satan’s jeweled crown
Or Christ’s humble cup

You think you’ll find yourself out there
Out in the lion’s den
In somebody’s battle
Over belief systems

Or disappear into the vacuum
Total neutrality
Well you can’t lose nothing
But nothing can be gained

Well anyway you cut it
We’re just spinning around
Out on the circuits
Over the hollow grounds
Out on the circuits
Over the hollow grounds
Heading right back in the same place
That we started out
Right back in the same place
Right back in the same place
That we started out

About the band themselves I know little. Wikipedia says they hail from Louisville, Kentucky, and first set themselves up in 1998. They’ve played with Neil Young, done the late-night talk-show circuit, and at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival (Wikipedia again) performed a four-hour set — starting at midnight! — of thirty-five songs. No doubt the band members were exhausted afterward; on the evidence of “Circuital,” I bet a good chunk of the audience joined them.