Whether you’re a converted fan, only vaguely familiar or a complete MMJ novice, here is a bunch of tracks to draw you in, starting with their more accessible and ‘easy on the ear’ songs, before taking you somewhere more intriguing, and beguiling. Tumble over the edge!

MY MORNING JACKET: STOPPING WATERFALLS

There is a very funny scene in the seventh episode of season 6 of American Dad, in which Stan races to a My Morning Jacket show, intent on extracting teenage daughter Hayley from the corrupting filth of such an environment that is a modern rock concert, only to find himself entranced by the music. On removal of his (CIA issue) earplugs Stan hears Jim James’ as the voice of an angel. MMJ is performing ‘Wordless Chorus’, a track from the album ‘Z’. It’s a particularly funny scene to me, since my only experience of seeing the band play live was at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire during their tour of The Waterfall album in 2015. I took my wife along and we turned up late, as the band had already struck up and were into the opening track - ‘Wordless Chorus’ as it happens. It sounded not like an angel, and not great at all. The Empire was rammed, sweaty and stinking of stale beer, with the floor already sticky (don’t you miss steamy, germ-filled gigs, a?). We couldn’t get anywhere near a view and the audience was a rowdy young crowd that made me feel suddenly old and out of my depth, just a bit like Stan. I remember suggesting that we leave right there and then, since it didn’t bode well, but my wife insisted we stick it out. I then played a card - a bluff really. I had a hint of back trouble, and went to ask the management if they could accommodate us in seats on the balcony. Amazingly, they obliged (god bless the humble music venue duty manager!). 

Once we got up there in the echelons, the whole gig transformed. By now, the band was into ‘Compound Fracture’, the single from The Waterfall, and sounding bloody great! Later on, once they were deep into the set: ‘In Its Infancy’ and ‘Tropics’, it was bordering on magnificent, and took me to one of those transcendent places a gig can take you, where all your troubles are left behind and the music just swallows you up. 

There are a couple of moments just like that on My Morning Jacket’s new L.P. The Waterfall II. The music pauses for breath, then to lurch into a change - a surging guitar solo or a key-change middle eight. The effect is like being sucked into a whirlpool. Or perhaps, more like drifting slowly towards the edge of a waterfall, to the inevitable rush of falling right over. It’s irresistible and you wonder where it will take you next. 

The Waterfall II was one of those unexpected treats that turns up in your Spotify ‘Release Radar’ or ‘New Releases for You’ section, a genuine surprise and delight. I had no idea it was coming - no reviews, no preview interviews, no press, nothing: a ‘soft release’ as they say in the industry. I hadn’t even appreciated that the band had recorded enough material for two albums back in the 2015 Waterfall sessions. It arrived like a small miracle, and perfectly timed for a short family escape to the Cornish coast, where I’d first fallen deeply for The Waterfall ‘part I’ five years ago (and in fact, the same thing for MMJ’s previous album Circuital). Certain music will forever be connected to a time and place, and My Morning Jacket has somehow become my ‘beach music’. The Waterfall was recorded at a ‘slightly supernatural’ hilltop studio located in Stinson Beach, California, where the band rented seaside homes while recording, so that kind of figures. The Waterfall is very good beach music. It’s not beach music to bask in the sun while surrounded by other sun worshippers, but that’s not my experience of the beach. For me, it’s strolling down to the shore at 7 am when no one else is up, and entering the cold ocean water knowing that another world is there just for, at that moment, only you. It speaks loudly to escape, nature, and surrendering oneself to the elements: mind, body and spirit.

Two of the band’s influences affect me that way as well: Neil Young and Pink Floyd. I recall Neil Young’s On The Beach soundtracking a week in Cannes, where even the album cover seemed to capture the location exactly with its sun-faded beach parasols. As for Floyd, it takes me back nearly 30 years, to a baking hot campsite on a Greek island, where we’d be woken up early most days by the album Animals being piped from a rather loud sound system. Some music is perfect through headphones when looking out over a vista that has layers of land, sea and sky. It’s music for the horizon, not for airports!

Jim James’ wild wailing and MMJ’s elemental instrumentations can evoke nature very effectively. This is a band unafraid to make noise, and to create the dissonance from which beauty can emerge. Take ‘Spring’ from The Waterfall, as explained by James in a 2015 episode of the Song Exploder podcast: “I just love it when everything sounds dirty and horrible”. And there are some very nasty sounding parts to what is a simply beautiful track about the most transformational of seasons. 

It isn’t fashionable music that My Morning Jacket creates. Indeed, the meld of alt-country rock and late era Beatles-esque psychedelia sounds like a band out of time. That’s just perfect for sucking you into their orbit. Don’t resist it. Whether you’re a converted fan, only vaguely familiar or a complete MMJ novice, I’ve put this bunch of tracks together in a way designed to draw you in, starting with their more accessible and ‘easy on the ear’ songs, before taking you somewhere more intriguing, and beguiling. My hope is, that by the time you get to the core of the playlist - a grouping of more epic psychedelic tracks from the Waterfall duo LPs (starting with In Its Infancy, through to Spring and then Victory Dance) - you’ll be transported as I am, to some wild place (I mean check out those album covers!. All brutal beauty and earth, fire, water and aether). From there, the final third of the playlist will bring you down a bit, with a chilled set including a couple of Jim James solo tracks and of course, the (cough) ‘angelic’ Wordless Chorus, ending with the beautiful Feel You, from The Waterfall II - what must stand as possibly the best outtakes album ever made. 

It’s funny sometimes, how long a music recommendation can take to sink in. I was first introduced to MMJ in the early 2000s around the time of the band’s third album It Still Moves (the one with the Grizzly Bear on the cover). I tried it out, but couldn’t take to it - something about the reverb drenched production shut me out of the band’s songs. And that’s the way it stayed until I heard the single ‘The Day Is Coming’ on heavy rotation on the BBC’s 6 Music station, from their album Circuital. And when that album became 2011’s holiday listening of choice well, that was that. I was hooked and forever associating the band’s songs with escape, nature, exploration and relaxation. 

If I ever do get lucky enough to go back to the rocky mountains, it will be My Morning Jacket on the headphones as I hit the trails. And if I should stumble across a Grizzly or two then I’ll just invite them to a Victory Dance. Got a feeling MMJ is Grizzly kind of music.

The Waterfall II is on streaming services and Bandcamp.