Last night, My Morning Jacket visited DAR Constitution Hall, which is right down the street from the White House. And, as artists tend to do when they visit DC, Jim James waxed philosophic on our currently political climate for the crowd.

“Wow. 2008,” he said. Wow indeed. Well said, Jim.

His statement pretty much reflects the atmosphere of the night: more rock, less talk. And they rocked the house (just not the White one). For over 2.5 hours, MMJ ran through several of their new tracks from Evil Urges, including “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream” parts 1 and 2, “Highly Suspicious,” “I’m Amazed,” ‘Thank You Too,” ‘Sec Walkin,” “Librarian,” etc. Basically they played nearly the whole album, save “Aluminum Park” (my favorite on the disc).

Obviously that was the intent behind this tour (dubbed “An Evening with My Morning Jacket”), but as my lovely and astute concert partner pointed out, the crowd was largely lethargic during the new material. This obviously wasn’t true for the whole show, but the energy died down immediately (particularly through “Sec Walkin.” Ouch). I mean, the larger venues here don’t really do well with new material. Santogold was practically playing to crickets when she opened for Coldplay (don’t ask — it was a free ticket), and the stuff off of Evil Urges ended with the same results. The only point to make here, though, is that “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream Part 2″ was incredibly awesome. The coordinated light show created a face behind the stage, and it was nearly 10 minutes of psychedelic nirvana.

The last artist I saw at DAR was Neil Young. There were some obvious similarities (obtuse political commentary, late 70s classic rock guitar, lots of beards in the audience), but what I think I like most about MMJ is the band’s ability to morph their sound from the Outlaws, to some sort of Seals & Crofts knockoff on 1972 AM radio stations, to the Allman Brothers, to Guns ‘n Roses, and back to the Outlaws–all within 10 minutes. MMJ is just a really fucking good band.

Perhaps the most underrated member of MMJ is Patrick Hallahan, the drummer. For 2.5 hours, the dude was throwing down on the drums like he was trying to reach the floor below them. His 40 inches of hair flew everywhere, and I mean this in the most complimentary way possible: he is the embodiment of Animal from the Muppets. There may have been some additional bass drum pumped in through Bo Koster’s electonic keyboard setup in the corner, because it sounded a lot like some double bass drum action (but with only one on the stage). Regardless, the guitar solos during “One Big Holiday” would be a lot less impressive live without the driving bass drum shaking the floor.

Z was probably represented the best, both in terms of the music and the fan response. The one-two combo of “Gideon” and “Lay Low” was better than the encore, and if I ever win the lottery, you bet I will try to get Jim and Carl Broemel to play those two songs in my living room, back-to-back, until I die.

OK, so as some of you may know, I do have a penchant for criticizing things on here (Bloc Party’s new album among them; sorry about that, BP fans. How dare I voice my opinion on my blog?), so here are two main criticisms for this show (neither of which is MMJ’s fault, to get that out of the way):

1. The acoustics are awful at Constitution Hall. Really, Really, REALLY awful. It was tough to discern harmonies amid the muddled sound, and the audio levels for the mics seemed to be off between Jim and Carl. The background vocals were significantly louder for some songs (particularly “Wordless Chorus”). I know, I know. This isn’t a new phenomenon at Constitution Hall. But, seriously, get it fixed, folks. Otherwise we’ll have to push for concerts outdoors somewhere. Actually, that’s not a bad idea. I nominate Lincoln Park.

2. This is what I saw for about 10 minutes of the show:

Yes, that is a giant blue light. Yes it was behind Jim James, and yes, it burned my retinas for about 10 minutes. Time to aim that a little lower or higher than at the orchestra section.

All in all, a fantastic show. I spent most of the concert pretending I was at Bonnaroo, because that is probably the ideal place for MMJ to play. Even with no opening band, they are absolutely worth the price of admission. Actually, it’s partly because they don’t have an opening band. Having no opener left them more time for them to try their best Prince impressions on “Highly Suspicious” (which was both funny and highly awkward), trod through my second-least favorite MMJ track ever, Sec Walkin,” and play a sweet four-song encore. Not a bad setup for $35.00.