If you can learn a lot about someone by the company they keep, then you can judge a band by its covers (as in cover songs). Because on this fifth original full-length from Louisville, KY, quintet My Morning Jacket, the group’s come further from its reverb-swathed origins, only to cast light on its influences to a more glaring extent. Through 2005’s Z, MMJ honed increasingly splashy depths transforming folksy roots into space rock, while this follow-up opts for a drier aesthetic. The album opens with MMJ’s familiar ‘D’yer Maker’ wobblemeets-Street Survivors darting, but third track ‘Highly Suspicious,’ with Princely falsetto vamps and hyperbolic compression, is nigh derailing. The stride hits from boogie rocker ‘I’m Amazed,’ climaxes around oddly Jim Steinman-ish ‘Aluminum Park,’ and unfurls hints of Bread, Eric Clapton, Fred Neil, Pink Floyd (all previously MMJ-associated covers). Yet many tracks often feel like they’re straining against a limiter, tossing room ambiance for arena yearning. The album engages after repeats, but initially offers volume’s immediacy over intimacy.

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