Oversharing is the latest indulgence embraced by one generation and worrying another. Teens and twentysomethings raised by the Internet have no locks on their hearts and bedrooms. This drives baby boomers, who'd previously owned the market on narcissism, into a fitful frenzy. Kids dropping their own names instead of dropping acid? How wrong.
One aspect of our national character might, however, benefit from all this self-absorption: It could be making us a nation of artists. Oversharing, after all, is often the soul of creative expression. In the performing arts, the willingness to violate propriety and open up the self can make the difference between an admirable effort and one that blows people away.
Two new pop releases illustrate the benefits of well-wrought oversharing. "Evil Urges" is the fifth studio album from the Kentucky-bred rock band My Morning Jacket. "I Know You're Married but I've Got Feelings Too" is the second from the Canadian American singer-songwriter http://http:\\marthawainwright.com. On the surface, these albums have little in common. But they both risk an emotional and sonic forcefulness that doesn't quite fit in with the well-managed poses many pop stars strike today. And they're both fantastic.
Soulful hospitality
My Morning Jacket has been moving steadily toward its big moment since releasing its first album, "The Tennessee Fire," in 1999. Pegged early on as hippie Southern jammers, MMJ gradually showed its mastery of influences ranging from classic R&B to Pink Floyd. The group got pegged again, this time as "the American Radiohead," as its reputation for transcendent live shows began rivaling that of the English artistes.
But while Radiohead's expansiveness always has had a stern undercurrent -- they worked for it, it means something -- MMJ's vibe is warm and loose. It's always a pleasure to hear bandleader Jim James find new ways to turn his trilling tenor into a roar, and though he wrote the songs and is always firmly at the helm on their execution, his compositional approach is based on allowing his mates to stretch out.
This effusiveness makes MMJ utterly lovable. The band overshares, not in a confessional sense, but in the way bands have since Led Zeppelin first trolled the Earth: by claiming a huge space with its sound and reimagining the world within it. Most groups seek to dominate within these imaginary worlds -- think of Zep's "Kashmir" or Metallica's "Enter Sandman" -- but MMJ's encroachment is gentler: a welcome embrace.
