Psychedelic indie rockers My Morning Jacket came to Chicago for a three-night endeavor at the Auditorium Theatre this past weekend. I’ve been a fan of theirs for some years now and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go down to Chicago and catch them on Saturday night. I bought a general admission ticket that put me on the top row of the top floor – there’s six floors – so I was pretty high up. Opening for them was singer-songwriter Bedouine, who just released a new album titled “Waysides.”

My Morning Jacket is fronted by Jim James and features guitarist Carl Broemel, bassist Tom Blankenship, drummer Patrick Hallahan, and keyboardist Bo Koster. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, the band’s sound is rooted in rock and country but has evolved overtime to incorporate psychedelic and space elements. Their debut album “The Tennessee Fire” came out in 1999; their eponymous ninth album just came out a few weeks ago.

What’s remarkable about this trilogy of shows is that not a single song was repeated on any night; each set was at least twenty songs long and spanned material from many eras, so those who went to two or all three nights got a unique experience each time. On Saturday they opened with their popular downtempo-space tune “Wordless Chorus” from their critically acclaimed 2005 record “Z” which saw James entering with a cape donned as he walked along the edge of the stage in a welcoming manner. They played four songs each from “Z”, “Evil Urges”, and “Circuital” in addition to a couple from “The Tennessee Fire” and “It Still Moves” and a few from their most recent three albums (“The Waterfall”, “The Waterfall II”, and the self-titled). In their four-song encore they played “Z” single “Off the Record” and finished with arguably their best-known song “One Big Holiday” from “It Still Moves”; the latter the band wrote about making their big break and the tale that comes of it. You could say that packing a huge auditorium for three nights straight is evidence of such grandiose achievement; it all likely still feels like a dream at times.

The show itself was massive in presentation; vibrant multicolored lights accompanied the band as they jammed relentlessly across their extensive discography. Red and orange were perhaps the most prominent colors. James was exuberant as if he’d lost no energy from playing two two-hour sets the previous nights, while Hallahan unleashed a frenzy of a drum solo as “One Big Holiday” came to a close – they truly live for this shit. On top of that, the band was overjoyed to be in Chicago again; James bantered in the middle of the set to say that Chicago is like a big brother city to Louisville.

My Morning Jacket is a must-see live band. I’ve been a fan of their records for years but the addition of trippy visuals and jolly emotional display made their music evoke so much more devotion I hadn’t fully experienced from just listening in my bedroom. They last played Milwaukee in 2015; hopefully in their coming legs of tour they’ll pay us another visit.