Kentucky's My Morning Jacket specialise in a reverb-drenched Neil Youngish melancholia - intensely lovely, but essentially conservative. Z, however - well, most of it - presents a huge leap forward. Its opening trio of songs recalls both the Flaming Lips' fusion of Americana and electronics and also that point in the early 1990s when the sound of bands like Primal Scream and the Boo Radleys moved suddenly into Technicolor: amazing, unexpected, star-gazing music, full of wonder.
Unfortunately, four of the 10 tracks are deeply pedestrian, heartland rock, of which Off the Record is the nadir: a horrible, cod-reggae lurch that appropriates the opening six notes of the Hawaii 5-0 theme. Worse, presumably - like Charlotte Church - tired of having the voice of an angel, several songs find Jim James singing with the voice of a brickie. This from a man capable of the intoxicating, exquisitely riven falsetto on show in Dondante. Why bother being average?
