My Morning Jacket - The Waterfall

My Morning Jacket's seventh album!

Double LP set cut at 45 RPM

The kings of expand-your-mind, religious-experience rock

The Waterfall, My Morning Jacket's seventh full-length album, was recorded at Panoramic House, a Northern California studio perched on a hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The natural beauty of the surrounding landscape and almost mystical serenity flooded them with a charged sense of possibilities.

For me, every record has the spirit of where we made it," says Jim James, singer, guitarist and primary songwriter. "Stinson Beach was so psychedelic and focused. It was almost like we lived on our own little moon out there. It feels like you're up in the sky."

The Waterfall sparkles with aspects that touch on the band's celebrated past while pushing forward with a giddy assurance. James, Tom Blankenship ( bass), Patrick Hallahan (drums), Carl Broemel (guitar, pedal steel, saxophone, vox) and Bo Koster (keyboards, vox), have become known for their engaging, eclectic and electric sound, in no small part due to James' other-worldly vocals. The New York Times wrote about the band "...the new kings of expand-your-mind, religious-experience rock."

My Morning Jacket arrived in California after an unusually long time apart. Following a lengthy tour behind 2011's acclaimed Circuital, band members scattered. James recorded and toured behind his 2013 solo album, Regions of Light and Sound of God, while Hallahan recorded Sound of Nowhere with Spanish Gold.

Blankenship got married and moved to Nashville, and there were dozens of other projects, recording sessions, and marathon record nights in the wilds of Louisville, where James and Hallahan still live. Always a group of friends first, the reunion at Stinson Beach was the ideal combination of intense work and potent fun.

"It's sort of the perfect situation for us to go to an isolated place, with some limitations and not many distractions," Broemel said. "That's how we work best. We kind of get on the same wavelength of happiness."

On The Waterfall, there are fewer questions and more action. Spirituality has become grounded and made real. "I feel like I still don't know how to explain anything," James said, "but I feel like I've accepted that and I'm just trying to live."

James began the sessions with nearly 30 songs and kept writing. The elevating "Believe (Nobody Knows)" opens the album with a summating blast of faith and acceptance, but was the last song written.

"We did a ton of songs, so at the beginning there was no intention or focus," James said. "It was like, let's just go play these songs and figure out which ones fit. Once we did ‘Believe,' that kind of tied the record together."

1. Believe (Nobody Knows)

2. Compound Facture

3. Like a River

4. In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)

5. Get the Point

6. Spring (Among the Living)

7. Thin Line

8. Big Decisions

9. Tropics (Erase Traces)

10. Only Memories Remain

Be the first to write a review for this item OR just rate it