It's hard to fault songwriter-frontman Jim James and his Southern rock cohorts for branching out on their fifth album. They've paid their dues, and were no doubt itching to play around with a successful formula before it became predictable. But Evil Urges is almost immediately disappointing. The title track is like a half-baked nod to latter-day Grateful Dead, which was half-baked to start with, as James applies a feckless falsetto to a slacker reggae pulse. On "Highly Suspicious," the Gary Numan synths and robotic chorus might work if Beck was singing, but the spoofiness is so far out of character for My Morning Jacket that it's simply confusing. The boys do better at MOR country balladry ("Sec Walkin'"), yet once the guitars crank up (and thank Skynyrd, they do), these digressions seem like mere novelties. Too bad for MMJ fans, kick-out-the-jam moments like the blazing "Remnants" are too few to matter as well.

-- Steve Dollar