One Reading Festival my friends and I found ourselves accosted by a self-styled veteran of the scene. Whilst the blokes in our party were eager to hit the bar, our lone female, a RF virgin no less, asked the dreadlocked one if he had any tips. “Tips, eh?”, he mused. “First, catch My Morning Jacket and later,” he paused enigmatically before adding “if you use the toilet facilities here, don’t look down.”

We duly took the vet at his words and headed off to see MMJ play. To see five long-haired Kentucky natives head-bang along to their country-fried rock. So tight were they, it’s as if they resembled a five-headed Siva rather than a quintet of distinct individuals.

Inspired by Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps concert film, My Morning Jacket bowed to public demand for a live album. Okonokos, a double album and not only because of the number of songs but the length of them, is the sound of a band letting off steam. Despite being at the end of a long tour, they’re giving it everything they’ve got.

As MMJ front man Jim James explains: “We really go for it in the studio. But it’s nice to open the songs up, when we’re playing them live…A couple of songs stretched past the ten-minute mark there, and they’re my favourite versions of those songs, better than the album versions.”

To recap, if you’re ever at a festival and My Morning Jacket are on the bill, catch them. As for the toilet facilities, keep that head held high. Unless you’re some kind of faeces fetishist, as you’ll be like, and quite literally at that, a pig in shit.
(4½/5)