Nostalgia is a dangerous word. Some folks take it too literally, transforming everything from their jean jackets to their half stacks into the look and feel of 1987 (The Killers), 1977 (Jet), or 1967 (The Coral). When they mistake “nostalgia” for visual and sonic replication, these bands forget nostalgia can happen after the fact, when a determined performance leaves you wishing for a time (you imagine) when kids killed kegs in the woods, lost their virginity in somebody’s back seat, and lived and died for rock ’n’ roll.

While them good ol’ days are only as good as we choose to remember, My Morning Jacket’s caterwauling performance Wednesday night managed to save a bit of sentimentality from cynicism’s hungry grasp. To a packed crowd of young professionals and a handful of hipsters who managed to duck out of their Deerhoof listening parties, Jim James and company blew through their starry-eyed anthems with enough hair-flailing conviction to leave most of us wishing for the days when “rock” was the only kid on the block — and the only one you wanted to hang with.

Reminiscent of Lucinda Williams, opener Kathleen Edwards’s foot-tappin’ alt.country set the perfect tone for My Morning Jacket’s sentimental jamboree. The Louisville quintet has always “jammed,” but the tunes from the band’s latest effort had the members moon-walking, funked-up and otherwise distanced from the Skynryds of their youth. Not surprisingly, it was this side the Philly faithful saw first. Followed by two more excellent tunes from this year’s Z, set-opener “Anytime” jumped pumping and sweating from the starting line — James’s skydiving tenor colliding through Bo Koster’s joyful keys and Carl Broemel’s arena riffage. Throughout the night, the band members owned their new material, sliding between it and their classics as smoothly as Kentucky bourbon going down cold and slow.

If James mumbled his crowd conversation, he remained as lucid as ever mid-song — his ragged hair twirling violently around him and his feet running lamps around the stage. One of the mightiest in the business, James’s voice salvages majesty from his band’s darkest gestures and emerges bittersweet from its most blissful turns. And the fact that he can still rock the fuck out with a Flying V strapped to his shoulders was a sight to behold. Old favorites “Mahgeetah” and “Run Thru” (possibly the band’s best) were nothing less than celebrations, with James leading his able troops through every twist and turn of their southern-fried glory.

I suppose all of this fun requires a bit of acquiescence — acquiescence to the fact that we were all young once, that we loved the music enough to sneak out to our first show, that we drank the beer no matter how bad it tasted, and that we never wanted the night to end. I’m sure the older audience appreciated this. The members of My Morning Jacket don’t play music for teenagers, and they certainly don’t look like them; but standing hoarse and weary after their encore, you would have been forgiven for wanting to be one.

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