New Release from My Morning Jacket "The Waterfall"

“The Waterfall is My Morning Jacket’s seventh studio album, and a consolidation of its strengths, a hunk of substantiation for a believing fan base." - New York Times

“[The Waterfall] reaffirms that MMJ are one of the most exciting American rock bands going.” - Pitchfork

"The Louisville, KY rockers return with what may be their richest album yet" - Entertainment Weekly

“Stadium-size rock served with heaping helpings of psychedelic frizz and a healthy sprinkling of rock-snob credibility.” - Vanity Fair

“My Morning Jacket returns with a monumental new album.” - NPR

"…might be the band’s best record since 2005’s landmark “Z.”" – The Washington Post

My Morning Jacket have returned with their seventh full-length album, The Waterfall via Spunk Records / Capitol Records. This release will mark the band’s first studio album on Capitol Records, and fifth on Spunk. Recorded in Stinson Beach CA, The Waterfall is the follow-up to the GRAMMY®-nominated Circuital, which was ranked among 2011’s best albums by publications such as Rolling Stone, Paste, MOJO, and Uncut.

My Morning Jacket arrived at Northern California’s Stinson Beach in late 2013 thinking only about making an album. The band was not prepared to be seduced. But within a couple of days, Jim James, Tom Blankenship, Patrick Hallahan, Carl Broemel and Bo Koster were in love with Panoramic House, a studio perched on a hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The natural beauty of the surrounding landscape, located only about a half hour north of the Golden Gate Bridge, combined with the almost mystical serenity flooded them with a charged sense of possibilities.

“For me, every record has the spirit of where we made it,” explains singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter Jim James. “Stinson Beach was so psychedelic and focused. It was almost like we lived on our own little moon out there. It feels like you’re up in the sky.”

On the new release there are moments that reach back to early albums such as 2001’s At Dawn and 2003’s It Still Moves, the record that gave the band a much broader audience. But the experimentation that marked 2004’s Z, 2008’s Evil Urges and James’ 2013 solo album, Regions of Light and Sound of God is clearly in effect.

The Waterfall sounds like history and decades colliding, like a record made by fervent music fans in search of that tingle up the spine. Inveterate music geeks will hear echoes of vintage rock and pop as MMJ continues to honor its influences without aping any of them; The Waterfall sounds like nothing else but also warmly familiar.

“That’s kind of the sound of this record, and my life, the sound of the page turning and not being sure what’s coming next,” said James.

“The freedom we went into this record with took a lot of the pressure off, as far as what to do and how to do it,” Hallahan added. “The mantra was anything goes, no stone unturned, it’ll be done when it’s done.”

The band recorded The Waterfall by teaming up again with producer/engineer Tucker Martine (The Decemberists, Modest Mouse, Neko Case), who also worked with My Morning Jacket on Circuital. In addition to the Stinson Beach sessions, they recorded at Martine’s Portland, OR studio Flora and at Ratterman’s La La Land studio in Louisville.
But in the end, it all circled back to Stinson Beach.

“Out of all the places we’ve recorded, I think that place might have informed the record on a spiritual level more than any other,” adds Koster. “If you listen to ‘Like A River,’ it just sounds like Stinson Beach.”

The Waterfall is the latest in a career-spanning string of success beginning with the band’s 1999 debut album The Tennessee Fire and including 2008's Evil Urges and 2011's Circuital which each received GRAMMY® nominations - the latter debuting at #5 on the Billboard 200 chart.

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