For more than 25 years, My Morning Jacket have achieved an incredibly rare feat in rock and roll, upholding a long-established cultural legacy while sustaining the curiosity and creative hunger of their earliest days. For their 10th studio album the band teamed up with Grammy Award-winning producer Brendan O’Brien (Springsteen, Pearl Jam) for what may be their most masterfully realized work yet, once again expanding the limits of their sound while elevating their artistry to unprecedented heights.
My Morning Jacket have occasionally been tagged a jam band, albeit one that exists on the less slapstick-y end of the jam spectrum. But they’ve also often been at their best when compacting their rangily spiritualist 21st century Southern rock into digestible studio servings. That is definitely the case with their tenth album, “Is”, which signifies its inentions with a title that’s at once philosophical and down-to-earth.
The usually self-produced band changed things up by bringing a big-name outside producer – mega-reliable rock record-maker Brendan O’Brien, MMJ’s previous LP, a self-titled record from 2021, had three songs that went on past the seven-minute mark. This one doesn’t have any over five. “Out In the Open” kicks things off with what sounds like a marriage proposal by the sea: “Well, I’m walking on the ocean/Praying in the sand/Pledging my devotion/Won’t you take my hand?” Jim James sings over a hypnotic acoustic guitar figure that will eventually spread out into a dance-y, freewheeling rock track with a swirling groove any prospective body-mover can get down to without unsettling their IPA. “Half a Lifetime” is classic-rock dream-pop. “Everyday Magic” lofts lyrics about finding the good amidst life’s daily blur over a taut, amiably swaggering Stones riff. “Squid Ink” merges industrial pulse and blues crunch to sound a little like the Black Crowes if they’d ever made a record with Trent Reznor behind the boards. With a trippy groove and sweeping solo, “Die for It” feels like it wants to drift toward the sunset for about ten minutes, but instead ends up saying its expansive piece in the space of an old-fashioned radio hit.
If some of this stuff might feel a little bit polished and hemmed-in for longtime Jacket fans, they can be reassured by thinking of how easily these tunes could become launch pads for capacious jams on the road. But the economy and texture here is refreshing. Restraint helps bring out the soul in the album’s softer songs, too. James gets his Roy Orbison on for the ballad “I Can Hear Your Love,” and does some coffee-shop theorizing on the folk-y “Beginning From the Ending,” musing, “Maybe there’s no tomorrow?/But love still lives on/In our hearts and the earth and the sun.”
One of the niftiest moments here cleverly balances studio craft, deep thoughts, and live power. “Time Waited” begins with a sample of the lovely jazz piano intro to “Blue Jade,” an early Seventies tune by steel guitar titan Buddy Emmons, then lifts into a burly, meditative mid-tempo rocker about finding the right mix between taking your time and getting the most out of it, an age-old paradox James renders with an earnest, believable sense of discovery. It’s a nice reminder that – like classic-rock itself – some hand-me-down notions are still worth keeping around, especially when they’re rendered in sweet new forms like these.
My Morning Jacket are back, and their new album is their first studio LP in nearly four years.
Jim James and the Lexington, Kentucky five-piece’s 10th studio album finds the band teaming with producer Brendan O’Brien for the 10-song LP, their first time working with an outside producer in nearly a decade.
Ahead of the LP’s March 21st release, My Morning Jacket have shared the first time “Time Waited,” a love song featuring a sample from pedal steel giant Buddy Emmons’ “Blue Jade” off the long-out-of-print classic Emmons Guitar Inc.
“I made a loop of that piano intro and listened as I went for a walk, and all these melodies started coming to me,” James said in a statement. “For a long time, I didn’t have lyrics, but then I had a dream where I was in a café and a song was playing, and the lyrics to that song became the lyrics to ‘Time Waited’ – the melodies just fit perfectly. And the lyrics are about how flexible time is, how we can bend and warp time, especially if we are following our hearts, the universe and time itself can flow to work with us.”
“Is” was mostly recorded at Los Angeles’ Henson Recording Studios, with the band atypically deciding to work with O’Brien as opposed to self-producing the LP. “Up until now I’ve never been able to let go and allow someone else to steer the ship,” James says. “It almost felt like an out-of-body experience to step back and give control over to someone who’s far more accomplished and made so many more records than us, but in the end I was able to enjoy the process maybe more than I ever have before.”
As for the simple album title, James added, “I like how the word is indicates a sense of presence in the now – there’s no logic or rationale behind this record; it just is,” says James. “All these songs came into existence out of an attempt to connect with something beyond the human experiment, which for me is one of the most beautiful things about music – that connection with something larger than us, yet something we are all equally a part of.”
Sometimes a change can do you good, and handing over the production keys to Brendan O’Brien (AC/DC, Pearl Jam, Springsteen) proved to be a change that allowed MMJ to deliver their most cohesive (and concise) album so far. Running the gamut from expansive, hypnotic opener “Out In The Open” to the squelchy riffery of “Squid Ink”, the Beatle-y country funk of “Everyday Magic” via the beautiful piano-led “Time Waited”, Is exudes a focused confidence that makes MMJ’s tenth time a charm.
“Is”, My Morning Jacket’s first non-seasonal LP since their 2021 self-titled album, is available via ATO March 21st release.
“is” Track List
Out In The Open
Half A Lifetime
Everyday Magic
I Can Hear Your Love
Time Waited
Beginning From The Ending
Lemme Know
Squid Ink
Die For It
River Road
The Fat Angel Sings 