In that interim, it’s not like you all were silent. It was like, if we go in the studio and it sucks or we don’t come up with anything then, whatever, maybe we just won’t keep going. This one, there was no goal and there was no expectation. There’s so many things going through your head. So many times in the past, you go into the studio with so much pressure and expectation and you want to fucking blow everyone’s minds. like deliberately trying to make an amazing record or whatever. I think that set a nice space for us to end up making a lot of music we really like, vs.
I think in many ways that lack of conscious intention took us back to what it felt like to have band practice, to just be the five of us playing music in a really free and vulnerable way and not really worried about the outcome or making mistakes or anything like that. We didn’t even know if we would make a record or not. It had been so long, and we just got together organically and got in the studio with no pressure. It all kind of came back together really naturally, in that we had had a nice long break and played a couple shows that felt very powerful and magical to us. JIM JAMES: For a while there we weren’t really sure if we’d ever make another record again, or ever play any shows. That feels like a statement moment to me. Obviously it’s been a long time, and you’re returning with a self-titled album a little over 20 years into My Morning Jacket’s existence. Ahead of My Morning Jacket‘s arrival this week, we called up James to talk about the new album, as well as all kinds of other moments from across the last 25 years.
James has had a lot of extracurricular gigs through the years, everything from surprise Moby collabs to enchanting movie cameos like in I’m Not There. Ever since MMJ’s buzzy early days and their indie crossover moment, the band has popped up all over the place. Various members embarked on other endeavors along the way, especially James - a constant clip of solo albums intertwined with collaborations and production gigs and odds and ends.
While the album marks MMJ’s real-deal return after half a decade, it’s not like the band has been quiet. It’s also got several songs you can already imagine being absolute killers once they’ve been folded into MMJ’s live repertoire. My Morning Jacket gets far closer - there’s a raw, rollicking quality to the album, with several songs you could easily imagine deriving from various eras of MMJ’s career. Back in 2011, the story about Circuital was that it was the closest the band had gotten to approximating their legendary live sound. Jim James produced it himself, and the band played everything together in a room with no expectations of what might happen.
Musically, they honed in on core elements of their identity. Over 20 years in, My Morning Jacket have chosen to make their self-titled moment, a rechristening after some time in the wilderness. In many ways, the release feels like a line in the sand, an obvious new beginning. They found themselves back in the studio, unsure of what the next chapter of My Morning Jacket might hold but nevertheless on their way towards My Morning Jacket - their first full-fledged new album in six years, arriving this Friday. But after getting back together for a handful of 2019 shows celebrating the 20th anniversary of their debut album The Tennessee Fire, the band was rejuvenated. After touring their 2015 album The Waterfall, things started to get quiet around My Morning Jacket - except for rumblings or rumors that the band was going on a very, very long hiatus. We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.įor a while there, it seemed as if one of our most reliable contemporary rock institutions had quietly fallen apart.