My Morning Jacket’s Down-to-Earth Reboot

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, known for his work with Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen, and more — and the concise results feel like a reboot after their at times long-winded last album. Sometimes less room to ramble (and/or tamble) can be a good thing.

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.