THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The band’s first new music since 2015’s Grammy-nominated The Waterfall, My Morning Jacket’s self-titled ninth album reaffirms the rarefied magic that’s made the Kentucky quintet so beloved, embedding every groove with moments of discovery, revelation, and ecstatic catharsis.
Produced and engineered by singer-guitarist and chief songwriter Jim James over two multi-week sessions at 64 Sound in Los Angeles, the album came to life after what looked like a permanent hiatus for the band. But after performing four shows in summer 2019 — beginning with two mind-blowing nights at Red Rocks Amphitheatre — My Morning Jacket were overcome with the urge to carry on. That sense of purpose can be heard throughout the thrillingly expansive 11-track album. For all their unbridled joy, songs like Regularly Scheduled Programming and the otherworldly, album-closing I Never Could Get Enough once again reveal My Morning Jacket’s hunger for exploring the most nuanced and layered existential questions in song form while simultaneously harnessing the hypnotic intensity of their legendary live show more fully than ever before.
“I hope this album brings people a lot of joy and relief, especially since we’ve all been cooped up for so long,” says James. “I know that feeling you get from driving around blasting music you love, or even lying in bed and crying to the music you love. The fact that we’re able to be a part of people’s lives in that way is so magical to us, and it feels really good that we’re still around to keep doing that.”
The first single Regularly Scheduled Programming “really hits home for me after what we’ve gone through with the pandemic,” says James. “But even before then, it felt like so many of us were trading real life for social media, trading our own stories for the storylines on TV, trading our consciousness for drugs. We need to help each other wake up to real love before it’s too late.”
