Tennessee Fire

My Morning Jacket | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 13, 1999)
• Original Release Date: May 25, 1999
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Darla Records
• ASIN: B00000J7NL
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,778 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #30 in Music > Alternative Rock > Indie & Lo-Fi > Dream Pop

Editorial Reviews

Debut 1999 album from this band that hails from Louisville, Kentucky. My Morning Jacket are a five-piece alt-country rock outfit who practice in a grain silo on a 1,000 acre farm. 'This may be the most lonesome record I've heard this year, with the reverb making it sound like it was recorded in the dead of night at the back of a concrete drainage culvert, kudzu growing on the amps, major sevenths littering the ground like cigarette butts. These kids can harmonize, too, a talent that most alt-country bands are sadly lacking' - Pitchfork. 16 tracks. Darla.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ...in defense of the sound quality and everything that is sacred, July 1, 2005

By 

Rudy Foolish "mountain bucko" (Morgantown, WV USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tennessee Fire (Audio CD)

Many reviews of this album rightfully confirm the unmistakable beauty of the songs themselves but come down pretty hard on the production value. I can understand the need to make such impossibly heartbreaking, devastating music more palatable and polished (and thus easier to appreciate), but I sensed that a few of these were coming at the album with a spreading, contagious contempt for what has become passé low-fi indie sound, which first of all does a great disservice to the legend behind "The Tennessee Fire"--namely, that Jim James and his crew recorded this entirely inside a grain silo. Secondly, bashing the production value seems to deny the art its medium, like looking at an ice sculpture and saying, "Well, what a stupid thing to make a sculpture out of." Lastly, what makes this "The Tennessee Fire" is the Kentucky grain silo sound studio, the garage band reverb, wailing, whiskey-soaked vocals, and all the echoes and scuffles and distracting dropped instruments that are all but an orchestra of lonely, desperate high school nights spent out in the middle of nowhere, playing cranked-up instruments on bad sound equipment. If you're going to take this into some lavish sound studio and erase what essentially makes this album so intimate, you might as well keep clicking until you reach the Billboard Top 20. You might just find that sterilized, studio uniformity you've been looking for. But if you want 15 incredible songs that all sound like perfect first takes with the ghosts of the four-track gods lurking in the cassette hiss, then you might want to think about lowering your quality standards a little bit, because this is a bad production at it's very best.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Was A Bit Skeptical, February 2, 2004

By 

Ben Up the Tree "benupthetree" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tennessee Fire (Audio CD)

I bought It Still Moves and after half a dozen listens was still unsure how I felt about it. Many times you pick up an album and after a few listens you get it. The album becomes familiar. Not so with my morning jacket, their songs are very difficult to classify or break down. At first listen The Tennessee Fire seems roughly recorded, as if recorded live, but on closer inspection you'll notice that one song may be recoded as if you're listening across a room and the next as if you're at the front of a stage. This is not an amateur recording, but rather a very deliberate use of sound to create a song's atmosphere. Although I found the effect unnerving on It Still Moves my first listening, My Morning Jacket use their recording studio's natural acoustics as part of their sound on all their albums. This is a very rough album with some very polished corners... but the loose ends are exquisite.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Molessas-n-Fire, May 9, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tennessee Fire (Audio CD)

AT DAWN is their masterpiece. TENNESSEE FIRE is where you go for more. Recorded under questionable conditions, this is their big hello to the world. It was recorded in a barn at their own expense & it sounds like it. My first introduction to the band was through The Oxford American Annual Music Issue Sampler. The song featured, was "Evelyn Is Not Real". I kept playing it over & over till I could get my hands on a proper album. What I heard was infectious & mysterious. Kind of a cross between very early REM & Neil Young. Twangy enough to merit comparisons to Uncle Tupelo & Wilco, but far less premeditated. Needless to say, the hookey opener, "Heartbreakin' Man" did not disappoint my high expectations. Let lines like, "20x's I wish you'd understand that you're breaking the hearts of great men" serve as cause for further investigation. "They Ran", "The Bear" bring to mind the more sombre moments of the now legendary Big Star. If you marveled at "Daisy Glaze" off of RADIO CITY or "Big Black Car" from 3rd/SISTER LOVERS, then this band is for you. Frontman, Jim James likes his reverb. Infact, he cranks it to 11. So everything sounds echoey & slightly underwater. But passionate offerings like, "Nashville To Kentucky" prove they can wade in without drowning. "All Else Fails" brings the Indy quirkiness of Will Oldham to mind. I love the bit of banjo they put into it. "It's About Twilight Now" prove these guys can rock & "I Will Be There When You Die" is heartwarming. Though a few of these 15 tracks may not grab you at first, there's plenty of bait on here to reel you in.

If VU was the best underground band of the 60's. Big Star, the 70's. Early REM, the 80's & Uncle Tupelo in the 90's. Well, My Morning Jacket is out there for you here & now.