By Paul Robicheau

My Morning Jacket remains one of rock’s best live acts, and a stylistically broad one. And more bands should be so generous in not only representing their entire catalog but mixing up the song selection every night.

My Morning Jacket’s Carl Broemel and Jim James at Roadrunner: Photo Paul Robicheau

On its current fall tour, My Morning Jacket celebrates the 20th anniversary of third album It Still Moves — widely considered the band’s best record, with its big riffs and reverb-rich vocals — by playing it in its entirety. But, alas, that only holds true for one show per multinight stand in New York, Atlanta, and Chicago. When the Kentucky rockers rolled into Boston for a Tuesday one-off, it was sort of business as usual, sparking just two numbers from It Still Moves within a sweeping two-hour-plus blitzkrieg.

Granted, the night’s album-opening choices from It Still Moves proved high points at a sold-out Roadrunner. The set-peaking guitar dream “Mahgeetah” (sealed by bassist Tom Blankenship’s punchy notes) and an encore-closing “Dancefloors” both straddled the 10-minute mark with ebullient jams.

My Morning Jacket’s Jim James at Roadrunner. Photo: Paul Robicheau

But MMJ recorded eight other albums, including 2005’s also-lauded Z, the source of more of Tuesday’s best-delivered and -received tunes. They included the psych-reggae-pop jaunt “Off the Record,” set closer “Gideon” (which built from hymn to backlit barrage of over-bright strobes), and encore centerpiece “Wordless Chorus,” where singer Jim James playfully stalked the stage and a Pink Floydian light show expanded to mirror-ball sprays.

In turn, the quintet included tracks from all nine of its albums in the 22-song set, if not always the strongest ones. What made the show both interesting and overly diffuse was how the night favored rarities. After the set began with both parts of “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream” (where James seized the spotlight as he paced the stage wings to gesture toward fans), the singer joined Carl Broemel in a twin-guitar face-off for “You Wanna Freak Out” — distinctive merely for being only its second version since 2018.

MMJ dipped into its 1999 debut The Tennessee Fire for both the countrified trifle “Evelyn Is Not Real” and more wistful “The Bear,” James strumming an acoustic and plying his wilderness howl in front of his stuffed bear totem, which sported a Hawaiian lei and multicolored robe. And opening act Madi Diaz duetted with James in the modest, rarely offered “Thank You Too!”

My Morning Jacket’s Patrick Hallahan at Roadrunner. Photo: Paul Robicheau

More impactful nuggets arrived in “Outta My System” (begun with James’s lyric “They told me not to smoke drugs, but I wouldn’t listen” and spiced by Broemel’s pedal steel) and the reverent, encore-greeting “At Dawn,” aptly bathed in a glow of yellow backlights. MMJ’s eponymous 2021 latest album was just adequately represented with “In Color” (augmented by the striking light grid), a plodding “Never in the Real World,” and “Regularly Scheduled Programming,” boosted by a biting Broemel slide solo over keyboardist Bo Koster’s pulsing chords. And if the title track of 2008’s Evil Urges wasn’t the best song from that schizophrenic electro-funk outing, it stood out with James’s falsetto turns and the band jamming in whiplash circles behind Broemel’s lead. Blankenship’s long hair flew in the breeze of an onstage fan and drummer Patrick Hallahan surged into busy-pounding gear.

Sometimes a jam went on a bit long. An early “Lay Low” stretched to 10 minutes, with James tacking on an indulgent guitar coda capped by two-hand tapping. And, since the sound mix wasn’t as sharp as the light show, by the extended finale of “Dancefloors” the group eventually wore out its welcome with the jamming card.

Of course, there were other ways to look at it all. MMJ remains one of rock’s best live acts, and a stylistically broad one. And more bands should be so generous in not only representing their whole catalog but mixing up the song selection every night. Fans might miss a favorite song or two at a given show, but even those who have seen the group for two decades or more are liable to catch something they hadn’t heard before. And perhaps that’s worth weaker spots in the Jacket’s patchwork.

Paul Robicheau served more than 20 years as contributing editor for music at the Improper Bostonian in addition to writing and photography for the Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He was also the founding arts editor of Boston Metro.