If the new My Morning Jacket record, “The Waterfall,” sounds lush and expansive, it might have something to do with location. The Louisville, Ky., band recorded its seventh album on a summit looking out over the Pacific Ocean in Stinson Beach, Calif.
“The feeling we had of being really relaxed, with this picturesque window looking out over the beach from the top of this hill, I think that definitely invaded the sound of the record in a good way,” said bassist Tom Blankenship, one of two members left from the original lineup.
It’s the first MMJ record in four years, but it wasn’t like there was that much downtime. The band wrapped up the tour for “Circuital” in August 2013 with the AmericanaramA Festival of Music tour, with Bob Dylan and Wilco. Then the band went to work on the record that October, starting with about 30 demos from frontman Jim James.
“They were like little sketches with chords or a vocal melody, glimpses of what he had in mind. Then we would just jump in the studio and start playing the song, sometimes new songs would come in that we hadn’t even heard yet. We’d run through the song two or three times and then press ‘record.’ “
It certainly takes some of the pressure off the rest of the band when they’re working with a singer as gifted as James, whose vocals on this soulful set have drawn comparisons to Marvin Gaye.
“Jim had a great voice in our early 20s, but it’s crazy to hear how it’s grown over the years,” the bassist said. “You can hear that between the second, third and fourth records, where it’s really like the backgrounds aren’t just harmonies; it had become another instrument.”
During the studio sessions, James doesn’t get too wrapped up in the lyrics, Blankenship said, but the bassist said he noticed with this set that “in the past there have been all these songs about (Jim) spiritually finding his place or finding our places in the world. This felt more like a very mature Jim who had found his place and was trying to express what it was like to be in that. I’m not saying every song was like that, but I got that sense lyrically from these songs.”
Genre defying
The band emerged with almost two dozen songs, then narrowed it to 10 that fit well together. The rest will be saved for later. Again, My Morning Jacket is all over the sonic landscape, from the proggy “In its Infancy” to the Motown groove of “Compound Fracture” to the gentle California folk-rock of “Get the Point.”
“There are definitely pieces that reflect back to what we’ve done before, but it always feels like a natural evolution,” Blankenship said. “We never make the sequel to a record. It’s like that happened in the past. We’re not going to listen to it, or think too much about it or reference it all the time. You just move on to the next thing, which is just natural in life. Our individual influences and where are lives are at personally affects how we see the world and how we’re processing (the music).”
My Morning Jacket changes from song to song, defying genre (its Wiki page lists six). A formidable live band, MMJ can more than hold its own in the jam-band scene but tends to be more on its own island.
“We don’t really worry about that,” Blankenship said. “To be considered part of any scene is a good and bad thing. You definitely don’t want to just carry some label with you forever. At the same time, it’s nice to have some identification because people need some reference point, especially if they’re not familiar with your band. I’ve been doing this for over 15 years, so it’s hard for me to have a healthy outside perspective on what we do because someone will be like, ‘You guys are super famous now,’ and someone else will go, ‘I’ve never heard of your band; y’all play some local bars or somethinv’?’ I don’t know exactly where we fall between those things.”
