The underlying problem with a band like My Morning Jacket is that it's often plain to see that they just don't know where to draw the line.

Every song - and these really are incredible songs - is drenched in weeks of reverb and drawn out to a place where sometimes it could almost be described as 'long in the tooth'. However, this is also a band so accomplished, so comfortable in their own skin, that it's quite hard to criticise them on any front.

Tonight, the Astoria provides an abnormally (for this venue) perfect setting for the band. During the band's two hours on stage, it's the songs from Z that truly shine; the soaring, soaring, soaring arrangement of 'Dondante' is feasibly one of the most perfect moments of live music this scribe has witnessed all year. Building from the tiniest of genteel beginnings and bursting into flower like the most rabid of intensely fragranced roses.

This is the overriding force tonight: when MMJ do loud, no one can touch them. Songs open up and consume the room and everything within it, with an energy that belies the fragility of the song behind the expansive sounds. These moments are executed so ambitiously that even if they didn't come off sounding like the whole world had congregated in the Astoria to make perfect music, you'd still applaud for the sheer audacity of attempting it.

Had My Morning Jacket quit whilst they were ahead tonight, their perfect score would be sealed. Unfortunately an acoustic departure into anti-war sentiments and another forty minutes of encore killed my mood and I left attempting to hold onto the perfect moments that perforated the first eighty minutes of performance.

Thankfully, I'm still reeling from 'Dondante'. Even now.

Photograph by Danny Clinch, from My Morning Jacket's MySpace site