My Morning Jacket are back, and their new album is 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.”
Is, My Morning Jacket’s first non-seasonal LP since their 2021 self-titled album, is available to preorder now via ATO before its March 21 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
