3. At Dawn (2001)

At Dawn is perhaps the album from which the early MMJ mythos emanates strongest. Each of the first three MMJ albums were recorded partially at the farm of then-guitarist — and James’s cousin — Johnny Quaid, but this is the one that is practically defined by the fact that James recorded his vocals in a grain silo, in search of an ethereal echo he couldn’t quite attain in a normal studio. And it worked. At Dawn simultaneously feels not of this world and yet so totally American, the details of its inception appropriate footnotes to an album that so perfectly evokes the nation’s landscape as so many country or Americana albums have before it. But At Dawn is of that ilk that paints the landscape as haunted. James’ hyper-reverbed voice is a ghostly tour guide through a South he figures as eerie and perhaps destructive on tracks like “At Dawn,” or “If It Smashes Down,” or in the headlong descent of “Strangulation!.” There are moments of warmth, too, but perhaps more so than on any other MMJ record, they feel like they could be uplifting or melancholic, and it’d be totally subjective. I’ve never really been able to decide if I think “X-Mas Curtain” and “The Way That He Sings” are some of the saddest-sounding MMJ songs or some of the most euphoric, and that seems another consequence of the spectral nature of all the reverb — by creating all that expansiveness, there’s room around the edges for you to bring your own meanings. At over an hour and littered with some overlong tracks, At Dawn is not the most viable first step into MMJ’s body of work, but it is essential listening once the door’s been opened.