You can get off to a fast start. You can sustain your opener with the main course, not filler. But can you end on a high note? Sometimes I wonder if recording a strong closer is the most difficult thing to pull off when it comes to album rock. When it comes to the cream of the crop in music, I can think of more strong openers than strong closers. Nonetheless, I still have my favorites which I’ll be featuring on Mental Jukebox all month.
There’s a certain crop of music artists that I’m slightly ashamed to say I ignored due to a strong repulsion to their band names. My Morning Jacket is one of them. What a grave mistake to pass on a band of such stature because the name was a little too soft and un-rock & roll for me. This caused me to miss out on the band’s output for well over a decade. By the time The Waterfall was released, I turned away from my transgressions – and became a fan for life. The music and vocals of Jim James have filled a void in my music listening repertoire – and they’ve done it with bangers as well as slow jams like “Only Memories Remain”.
As appropriate a closer as any out there, “Only Memories Remain” feels like the track doesn’t roll out until the wee hours of an epic, all-night jam. It sounds like the kind of music a band plays after it has used up all its energy, yet refuses to stop playing. Jim James serenades to the listeners while seemingly lost in a foggy haze. The guitars, like on many My Morning Jacket tracks, cry out and lament that the past is the past and what’s done is done.
“The names and places have all been changed, But the identity remains the same. As time and space do what they will, The spirit, so vogue, can never be killed.”