For more than 25 years, My Morning Jacket have achieved an incredibly rare feat in the world of rock ‘n’ roll – upholding a long-established cultural legacy while sustaining all the curiosity and creative hunger of their very earliest days. In a monumental step for the Louisville, KY-bred five-piece – vocalist/guitarist Jim James, bassist Tom Blankenship, guitarist Carl Broemel, drummer Patrick Hallahan, keyboardist Bo Koster – is once again expands the limits of their sound and elevates their artistry to unprecedented heights. The result is perhaps the most masterfully realized work yet from a band fully committed to their belief in music as a conduit for revelation of all kinds. Largely recorded at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles, is finds My Morning Jacket deviating from their typically self-produced approach by teaming up with multiple GRAMMY® Award-winner Brendan O’Brien, one of the most esteemed producers in rock music, known for his extensive work with Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam. For James – who has produced or co-produced all of the band’s studio albums since their 1999 debut The Tennessee Fire – the decision to work with O’Brien stemmed from a newfound willingness to open up their process and involve an outside creative force in shaping My Morning Jacket’s restlessly inventive yet nuanced form of psych-rock.
“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.” Prior to joining O’Brien in the studio, My Morning Jacket got together for two highly exploratory writing and recording sessions, amassing over a hundred demos before settling upon the 10 eclectic tracks that eventually comprise the finished album. New songs such as the sprawling, album-opening epic, “Out In The Open” and the delightfully warped “Squid Ink” reveal a band whose voracious creative appetite is wholly matched by a deft command of their visionary musicality. When it came time to name the collection, My Morning Jacket chose a title that speaks to the infinitely unpredictable nature of music-making.
“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 – which arrives as My Morning Jacket celebrates the 20th anniversary of their 2005’s landmark Z, a lavishly acclaimed collection named by Rolling Stone among “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” – represents another milestone in the band’s ever-evolving body of work, as well as an opportunity to breathe new energy into their historically stunning and hard-driving live performances. James points to the “undeniable force of loving” as the most essential factor in the band’s longevity and unending enchantment with the process of musical creation.
“One of the cool things about being around this long is that we’re not afraid to scrap something if we don’t absolutely love it,” he says.
“It feels really great to have a collection of songs we all love this much, and to know that we worked as hard as we possibly could on them. Hopefully those songs will be helpful to people and give them some kind of peace as they try to deal with the insanity of the world – because that’s what music does for me, and doing the same for others is always my greatest dream come true.” | 
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