By JAKE COYLE/The Associated Press

MANCHESTER, Tenn. - Bonnaroo began in earnest Friday with the rarest of double bills: Chris Rock followed by Metallica.

Metallica’s Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett introduced Rock, and the comedian in turn introduced who he called “the baddest … band in the world.” Both acts were unlikely fare for the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, which began in 2002 as primarily a jam band event.

But in recent years, Bonnaroo has broadened itself and brought more diverse fans to its 700-acre countryside site south of Nashville. Among the tens of thousands of festival-goers, Rock, Metallica and many other performers were very conscious of their entry into a tie-dyed world they seldom traffic in.

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My Morning Jacket returns this week with their fifth studio album, “Evil Urges.”

My Morning Jacket has always been a favorite of ours since we first heard “Death Is a Sleazy Pay” on a sampler from Uncut Magazine back in 2001.

“Urges” is the Kentucky quartet’s follow-up to 2005’s critically-acclaimed “Z.”

While the band’s first three studio albums were recorded in the group’s own studio in Louisville, “Urges” was recorded at the Avatar Studios in Manhattan, New York as a way to help get the band out of its comfort zone according to the band’s Web site.

“We wanted to deliberately try to make ourselves uncomfortable and shake it up,” says Jim James, frontman for My Morning Jacket. “I feel like New York is just limitless possibility—you never knew what you’d see on the way to the studio, every morning was an adventure.”

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“Evil Urges” by My Morning Jacket

Four stars out of five

“Evil urges, baby,” squeals Jim James in the title track of his band’s fifth studio album. “They be part of the human way!” A slinky funk strut delivered in Prince-like falsetto that blows up into a proggy Southern-rock guitar duel, “Evil Urges” rallies you to “Dedicate your love to any woman or man/No racial boundary lines, no social subdivisions” and notes that “evil” is often in the ear of the beholder. -Will Hermes, Rolling Stone

See Rolling Stones‘ Web site for the complete review.

Click here to purchase “Evil Urges.”