My Morning Jacket - Holdin' On To Black Metal - Rock and Roll's First Stab at 60's Thai Pop Soul

Click here to listen to the 2nd song to be released from the forthcoming 6th LP Circuital from My Morning Jacket. Got a feeling this one is gonna be a monster live.

Here's the tune that it reinterprets. Just further proof that no matter how much music you listen to, Yim Yames probably listens to more. Just when you think everything's been done in rock music, a new wormhole is opened. LET'S ROCK.

I like it even more now.

From SPIN 

Ubon Pattana were an obscure Thai group that emerged in the late-'60s, and their music mixed the far-out adventurousness of American psych with traditional Thai instruments like the khaen and lyrics sung in their native language. James jokes that he first heard them in 1970 — he was born in 1978 — so allow the man a little narrative freedom as he talks about this long-forgotten band:

"It's 1970. I am in Thailand on a business trip. The plane got in late and after I check into the hotel I find my way into a little corner bar for a drink. As I sip my cocktail and slink down into my booth, the music overtakes me and I know I am in the presence of greatness: This band, Ubon Pattana, three or four kids sunk behind their instruments with big coats and sunglasses on, are just laying down the thickest groove, like they are deeply stoned or half asleep, lost in a highly functional trance.

"And this girl, the sign says her name is Angkana Khunchai...I can't understand what she is singing, but she is in some kind of real pain and she is just fucking laying it down for everybody, hunched over, holding all her weight up with the mic just wailing. And her sounds that I cannot understand turn into words I'd been thinking about anyway, tossing and turning hopes and fears like we all do, things I've been trying to figure out but just haven't been able to. And now I'm trying to process it all here in Thailand, to find a way to make it all make sense before I have to return home again. And I look up from my reverie and tears are rolling down her cheeks, out from under her sunglasses, and mine are falling onto my pink umbrella, rolling off into some drink I know ill never be able to finish."