My Morning Jacket Put Their Name on Their Ninth Album

My Morning Jacket, the ninth studio album from the band of the same name, was released October 22, 2021 on ATO Records.

It is the group’s first album of entirely new material in six years, following 2015’s The Waterfall. Jim James produced and engineered it.

The record was announced August 24, 2021, led by the single “Regularly Scheduled Programming.” A special-edition double-LP vinyl package was offered for pre-order at the time of the announcement.

Eleven songs, two of them stretched out

The album’s tracks are “Regularly Scheduled Programming,” “Love Love Love,” “In Color,” “Least Expected,” “Complex,” “Lucky To Be Alive,” “The Devil’s In The Details,” “Never In The Real World,” “Out Of Range, Pt. 2,” “Penny For Your Thoughts” and “I Never Could Get Enough.”

Two of them run long. “The Devil’s In The Details” clocks in at 9:09 and the closer, “I Never Could Get Enough,” at 8:16.

The album credits list James, Tom Blankenship, Patrick Hallahan, Bo Koster and Carl Broemel. The cover art is by Robert Beatty.

Cut at 64 Sound before the shutdown

The band recorded the album at 64 Sound in Los Angeles across two multi-week sessions held before the pandemic.

“I hope this album brings people a lot of joy and relief, especially since we’ve all been cooped up for so long,” James said when the record was announced. “I know that feeling you get from driving around blasting music you love, or even lying in bed and crying to the music you love. The fact that we’re able to be a part of people’s lives in that way is so magical to us.”

The opening track set the frame

“Regularly Scheduled Programming,” which opens the record, arrived with a video James directed alongside George Mays.

“This song really hits home for me after what we’ve gone through with the pandemic,” James said of it. “But even before then, it felt like so many of us were trading real life for social media, trading our own stories for the storylines on TV, trading our consciousness for drugs. We need to help each other wake up to real love before it’s too late.”

A tour that started two months before the record

My Morning Jacket announced the accompanying run on May 18, 2021, their first United States headlining tour since 2017. It opened August 27 at Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre in Charlotte, North Carolina, followed by Railbird Festival the next day and Bonnaroo the week after.

Select dates carry Brittany Howard, Durand Jones & The Indications, Bedouine and Flock of Dimes. Howard shared bills with the band in Alpharetta, Georgia, in Columbia, Maryland, in Philadelphia and across two nights at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens on September 10 and 11, the only New York State dates on the itinerary.

The band resumes the tour on October 29 in Birmingham, Alabama, plays Suwannee Hulaween on October 30 and New Orleans on Halloween, then St. Louis on November 2. Three nights at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre from November 4 to 6 close it out.

One dollar from every ticket goes to PLUS1, directed toward nonprofits working on environmental justice, racial equity and access to mental health care.

One Big Holiday returns in March

Beyond the fall run, the band has scheduled the return of its One Big Holiday destination event for March 2 to 5, 2022 at the Moon Palace Cancun resort in Mexico. My Morning Jacket are set to play three times across the four days.

The billing also includes Lord Huron, Brittany Howard, Black Pumas, Sharon Van Etten, Trampled By Turtles, Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Steel Pulse.

Sources: My Morning Jacket (Bandcamp), Consequence, Variety, JamBase.

Photo: digboston, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.