My Morning Jacket

The Skinny (UK) 

4/5 stars

http://www.theskinny.co.uk/music/reviews/albums/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall (http://www.theskinny.co.uk/music/reviews/albums/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall)

On The Waterfall, Jim James sounds like a man at ease. With his 2013 solo album put to bed, My Morning Jacket's first record in four years returns the veteran Kentuckians to their mid-noughties best. Where Circuital could sound forced and James' proggy urges had infiltrated their music to the point where one more freewheeling guitar solo would have invoked the spirit of Rick Wakeman, Believe and Like A River are lighter, simpler and relentlessly upbeat.

There's barely an ounce of fat on show as the record veers between the band's country rawk roots, revelling in dashes of blues on In Its Infancy and the delicately finger-picked Get the Point. The Waterfall will rightly go down as a high point in My Morning Jacket's output; an album to restore some faith in the somewhat directionless Americana genre, but above all, it's a hugely enjoyable ten songs where Jim James' voice soars to heights this band haven't been in nearly a decade. [Stu Lewis]

Relix

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http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/04/album-review-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/ (http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/04/album-review-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/)

My Morning Jacket records are tinged with alt country's spirit even when they aren't entirely indebted to its tone. There's always been a folksy, small-town feel to the music and the methods, recording albums in a grain silo and a church gym a decade apart. It's in the DNA; the Louisville band's 1999 debut, The Tennessee Fire, was indie covering country rock. It felt like a jam band performing outdoors at the height of a Southern summer. The rest of their catalog, though sometimes fluctuating stylistically and aesthetically, is imbued with that same warm energy. There's a song like "Old Sept. Blues" on each of their albums.

They didn't become the band billed second from the top on a Coachella Sunday in 2008 before adding keyboardist Bo Koster and guitarist Carl Broemel in 2004 following the departure of founding member Johnny Quaid and keyboardist Danny Cash. The change prompted de facto leader and singer-songwriter Jim James to deviate from the band's then-patented formula, enlisting help from onetime Radiohead producer John Leckie (The Bends) for 2005's groundbreaking Z, which transformed My Morning Jacket from bluegrass-blooded folkies to a big name on festival tickets.

Z has often been called their OK Computer, and 2008's Evil Urges was the band cashing that check, using boosted creative license to explore even wonkier territory: subdued, pedestrian ranges, soft rock, some heavily feedbacking, blues-flecked guitars, and whatever "Highly Suspicious" is.

Their most recent album, 2011's Circuital, was more Z than Evil Urges, but not much like either. It exists more as a continuation than a sequel, creeping through eerie but soulful space rock and nimbly dancing around hymnal melodies. It sidestepped previous forays into ska and funk but maintained the original mission: a pursuit of interesting and dynamic rhythms. Meanwhile, as James continued to tinker with sounds from beyond, the lyrics seemed to suggest doubt was the catalyst for his restlessness: On "Victory Dance" he coos, "Should I lift the dirt and plant the seed even though I'll never grow?/ Should I wet the ground with the sweat from my brow and believe in my good work?" He seems to have embraced the latter on the band's seventh and latest album, The Waterfall.

The Waterfall is a My Morning Jacket crash course. It's where indie folk meets alt country head-on. It's Jim James hopscotching his way through past records with a far more lush, scenic destination in mind. There's a sort of idealistic, rustic vibe, the kind associated with the landscapes on postcards or "America the Beautiful". This is "one man penning letters in a log cabin by a pine forest" country rock with stringy banjo-esque riffs and heavy, isolated kick drums. But it subtly has big stage potential, too; the songs, though traditionalist, are equipped for riff-rocking and hair-flopping on any platform. "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)" and "Tropics (Erase Traces)" belong in the band's epic live sets. The album bridges the gap between the small-town feel and their current top-billing status.

Underneath the stunning sonic scenery there's a perceptive, generation-bending kind of songwriting about lost love and nostalgia that's equal parts love letter in movable type and triple-texting an ex. On "Get the Point", James sings, "I never have an answer/ I never seem to be there for you/ But there's only so many ways that one can look at a given situation/ And I wish you all the love in this world and beyond ... I hope you get the point." He leads with "I" statements, but there's a subtle condescension to his tone. It's a dump job written ambiguously. James does a lot of his writing like this. "For a time there by the sea/ There was only you and me/ In a land that time forgot/ You uttered sweet forget-me-nots," he waxes poetically in "Only Memories Remain", reminiscing before snapping back to the present: "Sometimes life has other ideas."

This sweetly written, often optimistic shorthand, which crams complex ideas into short sentences ("Only get one chance but you seem to always think twice") or frames them with sketches of simpler ideas, complements the striking atmospherics. There's a moment on "Believe (Nobody Knows)" where James' soaring cadence, the clicking keyboard, and the drums interlock seamlessly as he shouts a simple platitude: "Believe, nobody knows for sure." The frontman howls to open "Spring (Among the Living)", where accompanying riffs bounce along the outside of an admission of previous isolationism. He croons in a lower register with a gravelly tone suited to the surroundings. It'd be an oversight not to mention That Voice, which is one of the main attractions, and he doles out his liquid falsetto when needed. One of those times is on the elastic "Like a River", which is probably the album's most breathtaking treasure. My Morning Jacket harken back to their alt country roots on The Waterfall and create a remarkable vision of the American countryside in the process, one as filled with solitude as it is with wonder.

Essential Tracks: "Like a River", "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)", and "Get the Point"

http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/reviews/albums/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall (http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/reviews/albums/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall)

My Morning Jacket - The Waterfall
BY JANNE OINONEN, 27 APRIL 2015, 09:30 BST
8/10
 

"Believe!", commands the opening track of The Waterfall. Which is kind of appropriate, as self-belief is the quality My Morning Jacket's seventh album has in abundance. The Louisville, Kentucky five-piece have never made a bad record, but the last two (2008's Evil Urges and 2011's Circuital, the former's unfocused gallop through genres both suggesting an identity crisis and slowing down the lift-up initiated by 2005's masterful Z and 2006's steaming live double and film Okonokos) found them struggling to completely convince; these ten tracks mark a decisive return to the band's eccentric, uniquely warm and fuzzy top form.

The confidence in the band's prowess on display is somewhat surprising, considering the album's - literally - pained origins. Recording started two years ago, but frontman Jim James soon suffered a debilitating back injury that forced the type of extended delay that often leads to a total loss of momentum. Relationship turmoil also put in an unwelcome guest appearance. Throughout music history, misery has frequently been linked to an increase of creative potential, and so it is with The Waterfall. It may lack the individual killer tracks of Z or the alluring, reverb-bingeing analogue cocoon of It Still Moves (2003), but this might just be My Morning Jacket's most cohesive and fully realised offering to date.

There are detectable dark undercurrents: the clenched-fist frustration that fires up the big riffing of "Big Decision", the jittery rhythms seemingly echoing the awkward exchanges of a couple at the end of their shared road; the palpable heartbreak that fuels the uncharacteristically direct and nakedly personal break-up lament "Get The Point", a pedal steel enriched, wistfully beautiful olive branch to fans longing for the cosmic American grooves of At Dawn (2001) and It Still Moves. However, this is ultimately optimistic stuff, peppered by a sense of a decidedly unfashionable wide-eyed wonder, and all the more impressive and appealing for it. Sessions took place at a seafront house in Stinson Beach, California that used to belong to no lesser a deity of the psychedelic American music tradition that MMJ pledge allegiance to than Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, and although by no means sleepy, The Waterfall sounds tailor-made for unhurried, possibly bleary-eyed strolls down the beach at dusk.

At its finest, The Waterfall balances between mad and magnificent. "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)" proves worthy of its proggy title, as the multi-part epic moves from an almost laughably ponderous recital to sections of gradually intensifying beauty, hopping through unpredictable shifts in mood and tone that initially confuse before casting a deep spell. "Like A River", meanwhile, escalates from sparse picking to a torrent of tribal chanting, its head spinning aural overload married to one of James' most yearning melodies.

Complex and densely constructed cuts like this don't necessarily open up immediately, and the multi-layered production - imagine an aural equivalent of a particularly luxurious rug - may initially seem like an overly busy attempt to gloss over the cracks in the material. We're certainly a long way off from the days when James' vocals were recorded in a grain silo for added reverb and MMJ's records echoed with the spaces between the notes, and there are moments when The Waterfall sounds like the recording schedule may have been a bit too open-ended (check out the "Wanted Dead Or Alive" sound-alike intro to the otherwise fine "Tropics (Erase Traces"). Keep listening, however, and the songs soon reveal their full charms. MMJ albums in the past have always included at least one slice of lightweight fluff, but the band seem particularly keen to share something of substance with every track this time around, none more so than the stunning slow-burn of closer "Only Memories Remain", which features the album's most striking sound: that of a truly remarkable band playing more or less live in a room.

http://recordcollectormag.com/reviews/waterfall (http://recordcollectormag.com/reviews/waterfall)

Smooth tools deployed sharply

The output of Kentucky's My Morning Jacket has always charted the group's progression. Their sound is uniquely traceable from their influences but, nevertheless, unmistakeable. Its incarnation on their seventh album sounds optimistic – perhaps from a slicker period in music – lodged somewhere around the 80s but with lyrics that hint at a recent emergence from darkness.

Just as water itself never stands still, frontman Jim James details break-ups, numerous religious epiphanies and the prospect of an unknown future, situations most movingly raised when they appear directed at individuals. On Get The Point, the Blackbird-esque chorus offers, "I hope you get the point/That our love is done," that a chapter has closed.

Of course, that's only half the story. There's always another chapter, another coda or keyboard motif in MMJ's music. Despite the crossroads much of The Waterfall suggests, the band and their leader seem wholly, spiritually aligned – thrillingly so, in fact.

Q&A Jim James

Water seems a key symbol across certain tracks here?

Yes. Water was very important. This is the first record we've made so close to the ocean. We were looking at it all the time through the window: the beautiful curve of Stinson Beach – so epic. It's like we were on our own planet and this ocean had a special energy to it. The sand glows.

Many of the most bittersweet moments here are about trying to forget the past?

Every record represents a time capsule of the three years before it. So it's filled with everything... at least as far as my life has gone so far – loss, rebirth. I do feel like right now is a significant time for the universe. I feel it's this way for most people I ask. At the time of recording I felt like the page was in the middle: one chapter was over, but the next hadn't started.

A lot of the album at least sounds very upbeat. Are you optimistic about the future?

I'm optimistic in general. I know things go in cycles and I believe if something is broken it can usually be fixed if you believe it can, and can work towards that with positive conscious intention.

Do you listen to other music when you're recording, or try to avoid it?

God, I listen to music all the time, but usually not when we're working because my head's already full of music. But I hate it when someone plays another record in the studio – "Let's try to get that Beatles sound," or whatever... That drives me crazy.

Is anything too personal to write about?

It sounds so cliché but there are no rules. I write in different ways – one song will just be an abstract word puzzle, but then, sure, I also write about very personal things. I try to write about them in an abstract way and never mention any direct personal names or details. I'm a very private person and try to draw clear lines between the different worlds I inhabit.

As told to Jake Kennedy

4 stars  4 stars  4 stars  4 stars
ATO |
Reviewed by Jake Kennedy
© 2015 Diamond Publishing

http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2015/04/28/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-ato-records/ (http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2015/04/28/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-ato-records/)

God Is In The Tv Zine (UK)
Rating: ★★★★½

My my my. Methinks Jim James has been digging through crates of old soul vinyl since 2011's 'Circular'. There are traces of Marvin Gaye and Al Green all over the place, as well as a smattering of soft rock, while the frontman has clearly been perfecting his falsetto in front of the mirror on a daily basis.

All of this makes for a quite enthralling aural experience, for this is what My Morning Jacket albums have become – an experience rather than the casual, throwaway time-killing exercise that makes up a large proportion of today's musical output.

'The Waterfall' is arguably MMJ's most surprising album. Right off the bat, 'Believe (Nobody Knows)' is unquestionably the most positive, uplifting song they have recorded to date. Such is the euphoria of this gargantuan tune that you can easily imagine it being used as the television theme to an end of season sports relegation battle; an encouragement to those who may be floundering or have wilted – 'Believe', repeats James several times before the final payoff 'nobody knows...for sure'.Throw all your self help books away. This song is all you need to get you through. One can only hope that Cowell doesn't happen across it and dowse it in an Elbow-like bucket of oversaturation.

Whilst the latter composition would have slotted neatly onto the band's previous album, it is anything but representative of their current work, and next we move on to 'Compound Fracture', which gives a clearer indication of the subject I broached earlier – the classic soul of the 1970s and 1980s. It's a fine piece, though frustratingly, if I try to sing it, I find myself breaking into cheesy eighties boy band Brother Beyond's 'The Harder I Try', due to one miniscule molecule of melody sounding vaguely similar. But maybe that says more about me than Jim James...

Thank goodness then, for the comparable tranquility and ethereal beauty of 'Like A River' which follows. It has a celestial tone comparable to The Black Keys' 'Bullet In The Brain' and is a real fillip to the soul.
'In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)', by contrast, begins like The Beta Band and becomes a faithful homage to Steely Dan, also incorporating the kind of searing guitar work evinced by Jonathan Wilson on his 'Desert Raven' earlier this decade.

One of the finest moments here though is the George Jones meets Harry Nilsson exasperation of the bittersweet break-up song 'Get The Point'. There's little to it really, bar Jones and an acoustic guitar, but it's so effective that I found myself returning to it time and again each time I finished listening to the album in full. 'There's only so many ways that one can look at a given situation, and I wish you all the love in this world and beyond', sings a beleagured James ruefully, as he tries awkwardly to explain to the object of his disaffection why they must part. It's a wholly unexpected interlude and a tremendous example of the depth and range of the vocalist's writing skills.

'Spring (Among The Living)' sounds inexplicably like The Klaxons, featuring a female backing vocal not unlike Clare Torry's on 'The Great Gig In The Sky', then we're back to the 70's sound of Philadelphia soul for 'Thin Line', but with a crunching guitar sound that recalls Will Sergeant in the Bunnymen's 'Porcupine' pomp.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, MMJ venture into early eighties AOR territory with 'Big Decisions', sounding a lot like Toto, in fact, yet somehow they manage to pull this off meritorially enough that it feels like a classic rock tune rather than anything wince inducing that the genre was so good at supplying.

The workmanlike 'Tropics (Erase Traces)' starts as though they've drafted Jimmy Page into the band momentarily and develops the classic rock machine still further until the seven minute curtain closer 'Only Memories Remain' brings proceedings down with a tender ballad that sounds like Neil Young wrote it for Marvin Gaye's sadly underappreciated 'Here, My Dear' album.

'The Waterfall' must surely considered amongst the contenders for Album Of The Year. Yet again, My Morning Jacket have crafted an absorbing record that is so easy to get lost in that you don't even TRY to find the exit. Brilliant.

http://pressplayok.com/review-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/ (http://pressplayok.com/review-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/)

ALBUMS
REVIEW: My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall
Apr 28, 2015

4/5
RATING
If the first 90 seconds of an opening track can set the bar for an album, these 90 seconds will show you how it's done. The new record from American rock originals My Morning Jacket kicks off with a feel-good anthem to set your optimistically early barbecues alight, and continues in a similar vein. Phone Went West has to be one of our favourite alt-ballads of all time, so expectations have always remained high for Jim James and co to bring a healthy dose of lurve, all wrapped up in hundreds of guitar strings and a smothering of reverberated "ooh"s.

Single Big Decisions lead us to believe that this band certainly hasn't lost their sense of romance, or their ability to craft excellent rock songs, so we were keen to nab a good listen to the rest of the album asap. As Nana always said, "stick to the knitting", and thankfully, just as we hoped, this is exactly what The Waterfall does. Compound Fracture showcases James's deliciously understated vocals, enticing new listeners into this fine example of a fully fledged rock record that doesn't sound like the lead singer has been eating an angry wasps' nest for breakfast.



The pacey Like a River brings a gorgeous acoustic edge to proceedings, and raunchy electric-guitar-laced Thin Line soars high in the beauty stakes, evidencing that this is a rock band who aren't afraid to play with vocal harmonies and lashings of instrumentation. There's a permitted spattering of Americana mainstream easy-listening (read: sway-along cheese) in tracks such as In Its Infancy, Only Memories and mini-ditty Get The Point but the guitar riffs and the overall clever song structures can't fail to please the ears of discerning and (ch)easy listeners alike.

Despite the fact that there aren't any particularly unforgettable gut-wrenchers to replace our Phone Went West obsession, the production is still on-point and all of the tracks will translate incredibly well to live shows. There's a perfect balance of sounds, ranging from acoustic beauties to the tasteful BRING-THE-NOISE rock beasts like Believe, Tropics and Spring, all of which serve to cement My Morning Jacket as one of the most understanding and pleasing American rock exports of their time.

http://www.musicomh.com/reviews/albums/morning-jacket-waterfall (http://www.musicomh.com/reviews/albums/morning-jacket-waterfall)

My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall
(ATO) UK release date: 4 May 2015
3.5 stars

by Chris White | posted on 28 Apr 2015 in albums
 

image: http://www.musicomh.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-300x300.jpg (http://www.musicomh.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-300x300.jpg)

My Morning Jacket - The WaterfallAlthough they've never quite garnered the widespread attention and acclaim of contemporaries like Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, over the past decade and a half Kentucky's My Morning Jacket have quietly put together a body of work that warrants them a place in the highest echelons of modern American independent music. Ever since their 1999 debut The Tennessee Fire, the band have expertly blended folk, country and space rock into a heady brew of Southern gothic capable of concocting both sublime beauty and oppressive drama in equal measure.

2011's Circuital was up there with their best work and now Jim James and company are back again with The Waterfall, which maintains their high standards. Rather like Neil Young (whose influence is deeply rooted within their sound) My Morning Jacket have always embraced two distinct styles – soft, harmony inflected acoustic balladry and epic, ragged guitar psychedelia. But while the Canadian maestro has generally recorded full albums in entirely one style or the other (think Harvest Moon and Ragged Glory for example, although Rust Never Sleeps is the exception that proves the rule) James's men have typically preferred to offer up a mixture of both in the same collection and The Waterfall by and large follows this tried and tested pattern.

Believe (Nobody Knows) kicks the album off on a stridently uplifting note, with spiralling synthesisers and a joyous vocal from James, who implores us to "roll the dice, sail the ship, and all doors will open". With its searing electric guitar riffs and simple chord progressions, it's by no means the most subtle song the band has ever recorded, but it certainly gets your attention from the off.

Compound Fracture continues in a similar vein, with a shuffling rhythm, falsetto vocals and further use of crunching guitars and synths recalling the glam rock rather than folk rock of the '70s – not entirely successfully. It's only with the eerie acoustics of third track Like A River that we encounter the more familiar ambience we associate with quintessential My Morning Jacket for the first time.

Get The Point is one of the highlights of the album: a beautiful, timeless slice of country-tinged storytelling, it recalls the best work of Harry Nilsson with its blissful simplicity. A poignant farewell to a relationship that's run out of steam, when James softly croons "I wish you all the love in this world and beyond... I guess you get the point our love is done" the sentiment is as stark as the melody is gorgeous.

In contrast, "Spring (Among the Living) was created by James dissecting then overlapping different elements of a conventionally recorded track on his laptop to produce an ever-shifting sound collage, with different elements fading in and out of the mix. While it's perhaps understandably not the smoothest listening experience, it proves that on their seventh album, My Morning Jacket still have plenty of new ideas.

The Waterfall's last few tracks are consistently strong. Thin Line is the kind of coruscating, sweeping guitar rock the band has done so well ever since their earliest albums, while Big Decisions is perhaps the most lyrically acerbic song here, with James voicing the frustrations many of us have from time to time with prevaricating friends as he snarls "what do you want me to do, make all the big decisions for you?" Tropics (Erase Traces) perfectly distills the West Coast vibe of Déjà vu-era Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young before the final track, Only Memories Remain – all cooing vocals and deliciously languid guitar work – glides along sedately for seven minutes to bring proceedings to a close.


Read more at http://www.musicomh.com/reviews/albums/morning-jacket-waterfall#Kdc7o6pQuQOLCwGT.99 (http://www.musicomh.com/reviews/albums/morning-jacket-waterfall#Kdc7o6pQuQOLCwGT.99)

http://www.clashmusic.com/reviews/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall (http://www.clashmusic.com/reviews/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall)

In 2013, the Kentucky-based My Morning Jacket released their Grammy-nominated album, 'Circuital', and toured the US with Bob Dylan and Wilco. Following the tour they shifted their focus to recording, and the band took to the breath-taking location of Stinson Beach in Northern California, and created what would eventually become 'The Waterfall'.

Perched on the hilltop studio overlooking the vast sands, they claim the location informed the album on a spiritual, as well as a musical, level. Certainly, the wistful introspection as a result of beautiful rural surroundings has had an effect.

The album deals with starkly emotional situations such as failed relationships with a poignant, poetic beauty.  Thanks to slick production overseen by Tucker Martine (The Decemberists, Modest Mouse, Neko Case), there's a gloriously detailed and powerful sound. Moreover, the music has stark contrasts that work well to portray the emotions of singer Jim James.

Title track 'In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)' opens with heart-warming '60s psychedelic pop before bursting into an emphatic Minus The Bear–esque overdrive section. Elsewhere, 'Spring (Among The Living)' takes a similar approach; beginning down-tempo, it reaches gritty solos and howls that evoke Iggy Pop by the end.

The album is another typially broad statement from My Morning Jacket. 'Get The Point' is a raw ensemble of acoustic guitar and vocals, while heartfelt album closer 'Only Memories Remain' is similarly mellow  - yet boasts intoxicating lead guitar that nods to David Gilmour. In contrast, lead single 'Big Decisions' is stadium rock through and through with its commanding vocals and huge kick drum.

In spite of this eclecticism, the album feels like a coherent sketch of Jim James' mind which - just like California's rugged northern coast - is a powerful and dreamy ride. Another Grammy nomination could well be on the cards.

7/10

Loving these reviews... Minus the Bear and Beta Band references. Don't mind if I do!  :beer:

http://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2015/04/28/42608/tuesday-reviewsday-my-morning-jacket-olivia-chaney/ (http://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2015/04/28/42608/tuesday-reviewsday-my-morning-jacket-olivia-chaney/)

(link includes 8+ minute radio stream)

Artist: My Morning Jacket
Album: "The Waterfall"
Songs: "Believe," "Big Decisions."

Notes: The Saviors of Southern-rock? That's the tag My Morning Jacket was saddled with when the first big buzz about the Louisville band started to happen in the early Naughts, as if they were picking up the legacy of the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Well, given the way Jim James' vocals sometimes sound as if they were being beamed in from another planet, maybe southern Mars. Otherwise, not so much.

And yet here with The Waterfall, MMJ's seventh album and first in four years, there's a combination of mystery and sophistication that is undeniably southern, something that's been there from the start, but has only grown and taken on more nuance and character over the years. Sure, in concert the band can power it out with the best of them. On albums, though, it's all about the shadings, and often shadows.

That there's something extra going on is evidenced by four of the 10 tracks having second, parenthetical titles, starting with the glorious opener "Believe (Nobody Knows)." Yeah, there's a lot going on there, musically in the layered swells of quasi-orchestral grandeur and emotionally in the notion that there's something really big happening, but it's a secret.

Others, though, are quite direct, notably "Get the Point," which sounds like it could have been written by Jimmy Webb for Glen Campbell. And then on several songs we get Jim James the Lover Man, who has popped up now and then over the years, recently on one slinky track from the New Basement Tapes, the project in which he and several other artists wrote music to old, unused Bob Dylan lyrics. On The Waterfall, the yearning "Thin Line" and the closing, hurt "Only Memories Remain" both echo classic soul. Yes, southern soul. And very much from this planet.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/review/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall (http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/review/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall)

My Morning Jacket: The Waterfall
My Morning Jacket
The Waterfall 3 out of 5
BY JEREMY WINOGRAD ON APRIL 29, 2015

Ever since their breakthrough in 2003 with It Still Moves, My Morning Jacket has seemingly made a concerted effort to run as far away as possible from the tangle of meaty classic-rock guitars and shouted-to-the-rafters hooks that made that album, and their live shows, seem so monolithic. While the band's commitment to bucking expectations is certainly commendable, the specific ways in which they've expanded their musical palette have been more successful (2005's electronic-tinged Z) than others (2008's all-over-the-place Evil Urges). That trend continues on the band's seventh album, The Waterfall, where their forays into synth-heavy late-'70s/early-'80s prog and arena rock are alternately inventive and bafflingly blockheaded.

My Morning Jacket hasn't completely shunned their old sound: The album's sole electric-guitar epic, "Spring (Among the Living)," is full of intricate riffs, ripping solos, and tonal left turns that keep it from feeling overlong at six minutes. And when they branch out into synth-pop, it's convincing enough. They put Bo Koster's soft, dated keyboard tones to good use on "Compound Fracture"; paired with frontman Jim James's silky falsetto, the result is a slick, early-'80s-style white-boys-doing-Marvin-Gaye pop song (think Elvis Costello's "Everyday I Write the Book").

The issue with The Waterfall is that without a snarling bed of guitars behind him, or at least a decent pop hook to wrap his stuffed-nose, marble-mouthed croon around, James often sounds like a painfully sincere, nonsensical cosmic dreamer a la Yes's Jon Anderson. In fact, the multi-part "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)"—featuring laugh-out-loud lines like "Again I stopped the waterfall by simply thinking!"—sounds like a second-rate Yes song, sans the musicianship or compositional forethought. Still, the doomy verse chords are at least harder-edged than anything on opener "Believe (Nobody Knows)," with its impossibly cheesy ascending chorus consisting of a childishly starry-eyed James wailing, "Beliiiiiiiiiieve!"

James sounds much more grounded elsewhere, especially during the album's more restrained, acoustic-based tracks, like the plaintive "Get the Point" and the willowy "Like a River." (It helps that the latter's hook is just some chanted mystical-sounding gibberish sung through a billowing cloak of reverb anyway.) And "Only Memories Remain" is, lyrically, just a fairly boilerplate breakup song whose staid atmosphere and traditional soul-ballad arrangement serve as a comfortable comedown. It also proves that My Morning Jacket are at their best when operating safely within less experimental paradigms.

LABEL: Capitol RELEASE DATE: May 4, 2015

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20396-the-waterfall/ (http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20396-the-waterfall/)
7.9

"I'm getting so tired of trying to always be nice," Jim James laments on "Big Decisions", the first single from My Morning Jacket's seventh LP The Waterfall. It's a surprising line from James, a guy responsible for a nearly weeklong music festival in Mexico named One Big Holiday. If there was a mean bone in his body, we haven't seen it before—My Morning Jacket lyrics are mostly praise and posi-vibes, feeling wonderful about a wonderful higher power for giving wonderful men the most wonderful voices. On "Big Decisions", James pushes back on the weight of a lopsided relationship, and the mundane, everyday struggle is charged with everything that has made My Morning Jacket one of the most likeable major American rock bands of the 21st century—reverberating Flying V guitars, James' expansive rebel yell, explosive harmonies and reverb capable of canvassing the entirety of Manchester, Tenn. and beyond. Even if James is reasserting himself in an atypically selfish way, it sounds like a triumph big enough for everyone to share.
Since My Morning Jacket abandoned the grain silo on their 2005 masterwork, their albums have followed a similar format: reverb or no reverb, James' saintly voice can redeem anything, so no song idea was too strange as long as it could still work at Bonnaroo. On that level, The Waterfall does little you haven't already heard from My Morning Jacket; they just regain the quality control that abandoned them on Evil Urges and ditch the damage control that pervaded Circuital. "Believe (Nobody Knows)" feels precision-engineered for the express purpose of opening My Morning Jacket's live show for the next two years: a big, windmilled chord anticipates every low-register repetition of the title in the prechorus, preparing for when James lets the final "BELIIIIIIIIIEVE" rip an octave higher. And that's where the Klieg lights inevitably hit, as does the same recognizable liftoff from "Wordless Chorus" and "Mahgeetah", a feeling that the possibilities of life itself are limitless, not just the range of My Morning Jacket. You can't fake something like "Believe (Nobody Knows)" if you haven't played in front of tens of thousands of festival goers.
Then again, few found fault with the first ten minutes of Evil Urges and Circuital; the measure of a My Morning Jacket album is their success at doing what's not expected of them. Compared to "Highly Suspicious" or "Holdin' on to Black Metal", the risks here are more manageable, the results far more successful: there's "Compound Fracture", which tails off into a coda of keyboard flutter and falsetto after flaunting Chvrches electronic stomp and Some Girls strut. "Get the Point" delivers James' most biting lyrics to date within a McCartney-esque acoustic ditty ("I'm trying to tell you plainly how I'm feeling day to day/ And I'm so sorry now that you ain't feeling the same way"). The electronic cut-and-paste of "Spring (Among the Living)" is a sleek, modernist iPad compared to "Cobra"'s bulky, retro ENIAC, while Eastern modes poking through "Like a River" and "Tropics (Erase Traces)" scent the chillout tent with lavender incense rather than the usual weed smoke. It reaffirms that MMJ are one of the most exciting American rock bands going when they're at their most generous, curious and restless, as they are here.
But "Big Decisions" puts the focus squarely on a new place for an MMJ record: the lyrics. The song, and the album as a whole, gives Jim James The Person center stage for what feels like the first time, instead of just The Voice of Jim James. As on record, James has been open with the big picture while skimping on the details—after 15 or so years of giving his all on stage, he's left just as much off it, and here he is at 37, nearly crippled by workplace injuries, spent from partying and wondering aloud in Rolling Stone, "what have I done wrong in every relationship I've been in until now?"
There are legitimate personal stakes here and The Waterfall allows for James to express some uncharacteristic negativity without dwelling on it. For a record of spiritual and romantic reckoning, it's remarkably level-headed and pragmatic. James sweetly coos over Chi-Lites psych-soul, "It's a thin line/ Between love and wasting my time", clearly assessing a broken situation to which he mends on "Get the Point": "Daydreaming of leaving/ I only had to do it." He wishes his ex the best of luck and then immediately celebrates the exhilarating, frightening rush of single living on "Spring (Among the Living)"—during each rambling guitar solo, you can picture James right-swiping to his heart's content.
For many, Jim James is basically synonymous with My Morning Jacket, so it's justifiable to find parallels in the rejuvenation of each—My Morning Jacket has another album on the way some time next year. It's welcome news for the band's fans, but maybe a bit disappointing considering how a predetermined release schedule usually results in two very good albums in place of one great one, and The Waterfall gets close to greatness. With a little troubleshooting, it might have matched At Dawn's cohesion or Z's dazzling diversity: The misty-eyed reflection of "Only Memories Remain" cycles back to a breakup narrative on Side B that otherwise feels like it was put on shuffle, and The Waterfall stalls the most during the usually incendiary guitar workouts. But this is Jim James accepting where he and My Morning Jacket are at the moment: a bit older, a bit broken, more skeptical but very much among the living.

I've been nervous about the pitchfork review. i usually don't like Cohen's reviews but am pleased with the score.

http://drownedinsound.com/releases/18775/reviews/4148947 (http://drownedinsound.com/releases/18775/reviews/4148947)

My Morning Jacket
The Waterfall
Score 7/10
Label: ATO Release Date: 04/05/2015
PoorlySketchedChap by AARON LAVERY
April 30th, 2015

Ever since they first appeared around the turn of the century, My Morning Jacket have hung their hats on the lungs of Jim James. His huge voice, ably supported by levels of reverb only attainable in top secret government wind tunnels, was the essence that MMJ built their sound around, starting with enigmatic alt-country sketches before veering into classic Southern rock, radio-friendly funk and mid-tempo balladeering. But recently, that voice has spent more time in other pastures, with James seeming to prefer either his own company (his debut solo LP came out in 2013) or hanging with like-minded others, turning up on any number of other albums as a backing vocalist or playing a central role in projects such as the 'new' Basement Tapes Lost On The River. Musically, a lot of these projects have been more cohesive or just a lot more fun than MMJ's most recent efforts, with 2011's Circuital being okay at best.

So why has James gone back to the band for another LP, when he could be hanging out with Conor Oberst or Elvis Costello? Thankfully, The Waterfall shows that My Morning Jacket are more than just a backing band for their leader with the big lungs, and they're still able to sharpen his songs into something truly potent. There's something unashamedly big and bold in the music made by these particular five people, and it's there from the start of this album in 'Believe (Nobody Knows)', keyboards and building drums directing us towards a chorus that's as expansive and thrilling as the Californian countryside it was recorded in. There's also the slightly weird stuff here that MMJ do so well, in the shape of 'In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)'. On first listen it's simply four or five ideas spliced next to each other in some sort of prog-country soup, but after another couple of listens a strange wonky beauty becomes apparent, as the beautific slide guitar makes way for James's hypnotic refrain. Later on there's some synth action as well, just for good measure, and a monster guitar solo exactly as you'd expect, and then you'll find yourself singing it for weeks afterwards.

Next to these more immediate moments, there's the quiet reflection that was key to My Morning Jacket first capturing our attention, and thankfully on The Waterfall it tends to veer away from the stodgy MOR that has dragged down recent LPs; 'Get the Point' livened by some keening steel guitar and gentle finger-picking guitar.

As some of the song titles already mentioned suggest, James' lyrical inspiration is still very much the mystical, the quasi-religious, things going round in great big circles and brackets being needed in order to get the full message across, man. How much of this you can stomach will probably depend on how much My Morning Jacket you've come into contact with before – if you're adverse to any sort of cosmic mumbo-jumbo you'd be well advised to steer clear, but if you're not afraid of a man whose solo album was called Regions Of Light And Sound Of God, you'll be fine. The boisterous, almost-live feel of the production, and a leaning towards big, striding choruses and unashamedly anthemic moments means that things never get too ponderous. 'Big Decisions', for instance, sounds like it's being beamed in live from a festival headline slot, while 'Tropics (Erase Traces)' with its two-minute intro of spiralling guitars, is the kind of unashamed classic rock dads will tell you nobody makes any more.

Throughout it all, of course, is that voice, one moment shivering and fragile, the next cavernous and booming. Together with music that's both more imaginative and more straight-forward than on other recent efforts, it underlines why My Morning Jacket are still an important medium for Jim James's muse.

7 Aaron Lavery's Score

Quote from: unravelled on Apr 30, 2015, 08:06 AM
http://drownedinsound.com/releases/18775/reviews/4148947 (http://drownedinsound.com/releases/18775/reviews/4148947)
Thankfully, The Waterfall shows that My Morning Jacket are more than just a backing band for their leader with the big lungs,

This dude obviously has never seen, watched or heard the Jacket live to think this.

Quote from: subinai on Apr 30, 2015, 07:11 AM
I've been nervous about the pitchfork review. i usually don't like Cohen's reviews but am pleased with the score.

I definitely agree. It's weird... I rarely agree with their reviews but I can't not look at them either.

Pitchfork reviews are usually pretentious gobbledygook priasing unlistenable crap, while ripping up great tunes. This was a very positive and easy read. It is the second one that I read, however, that states the guitar solos are the weakest part of the album(?) WTF? And the drownedinsound guy says the album sounds live? It is the least live sounding thing they have ever recorded.

http://www.hitthefloor.com/music/indie-alt/morning-jacket-waterfall-album-review/ (http://www.hitthefloor.com/music/indie-alt/morning-jacket-waterfall-album-review/)

3.5/5 stars

My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall | Album Review

Posted by: Jenna Young April 30, 2015   

My Morning Jacket are a band with a highly unique sound, almost defying genre classification. Some of their songs can have quite a country feel yet, at other times, you can hear their classic rock influences coming through in the guitar work, or higher pitched vocals.

With their latest release, The Waterfall, they have done well to balance out the various sounds in their tracks, alternating between guitar and keyboard led, and switching out the more ethereal tracks for those heavier, more grounded sounds. A lot of the atmosphere on this record would be lost listening to it out of order. The rigidness of the structure fades towards the end, but this feels the same as fading out the end of a song, with the last few adhering to the lighter airy tones.

'Believe (Nobody Knows)' is a great lead into the album, it features the ethereal sounding vocal we've grown to love and expect from My Morning Jacket. The second track then throws us a curve-ball in the form of 'Compound Fracture', relying heavily on keyboard synth sounds. Who ordered a time machine back to the 80s? Because that's exactly where this track takes us.

From here the alternating tones really take shape, leading us through Dire Straits-esque guitar solos, an impressive vocal range and varying amounts of electronic sounds. The journey seems best summed up by track 6, 'Spring (Among The Living)' which finds the best balance.

It's from here that things soften. The biggest change in sound comes from the heavier guitar lead in 'Big Decisions' with the final two tracks nicely taking us out of this well planned album.

It really feels like this album is a culmination of everything the band have learned over the last 6 albums of their career, with its meticulous planning of the order and combination of different sounds. This is what is so good about this release. The varying qualities of the tracks keep the album interesting, but never differ so much that you are taken away from this as a cohesive collection of songs.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/apr/30/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-review (http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/apr/30/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-review)

The Guardian
Jon Dennis
4/5 Stars

There's a warm glow about The Waterfall that was missing from Circuital, My Morning Jacket's last album, in 2011. Bandleader Jim James and co-producer Tucker Martine have created a big canvas for MMJ's sun-blushed country rock, but have avoided any note of pomposity. The Kentucky band's tendency towards stadium-friendliness, evinced by the imploring Believe (Nobody Knows), is offset by moments of moving intimacy, such as Like a River, a haunting response to Stinson beach, the Californian beauty spot in which the album was recorded. And while it's possible to detect where My Morning Jacket are coming from – Get the Point recalls Nilsson's Everybody's Talkin', In Its Infancy (The Waterfall) has echoes of 70s soft-rock in its major-seventh chords, and the wailing guitars on Thin Line nod to Crazy Horse – they never become mired in self-conscious retro-stylings. James's voice is spellbindingly gorgeous, particularly on the closing track, Only Memories Remain, a late-night lament to lost youth.

http://nbhap.com/reviews/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/ (http://nbhap.com/reviews/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/)

My Morning Jacket – 'The Waterfall'
Their seventh record sees them in full shape.

April 30, 2015 Henning Grabow
My Morning Jacket - The Waterfall
NBHAP Rating: 4.6/5
MY MORNING JACKET
The Waterfall
Release-Date: 04.05.2015
Label: ATO Records

Tracklist:
01. Believe (Nobody Knows)
02. Compound Fracture
03. Like A River
04. In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)
05. Get The Point
06. Spring (Among the Living)
07. Thin Line
08. Big Decisions
09. Tropics (Erase Traces)
10. Only Memories Remain

ALBUM OF THE WEEK

No one really knows exactly when it happened but it must have been somewhen around the time of the departure of MY MORNING JACKET's founding members Johnny Quaid and Danny Cash in 2004 that the band's process of becoming the possibly biggest small band in the world began. The astonishing thing to see is that singer Jim James and his fellow musicians didn't aim for anything suitable to the masses at any point – instead they carried on the alternative country spirit they inherited in the first place and kept on growing along the barriers of classic rock, 70s prog and digestible psychedelic. Now, MY MORNING JACKET's seventh full length, The Waterfall has arrived and, though it's a bold thing to say in a world where usually "their older stuff is the greatest": If you wanto to start and comprehend this band in their whole spectrum you probably start best with this album.

There are many out there claiming that 'change' is essential to their art and that they never ever want to repeat themselves. The truth is of course, that a complete makeover of a once developed, distinct sound is neither necessiraly helpful nor a thing that fans usually appreciate. MY MORNING JACKET however have often been the band that neglected itself to a certain point with every release. From puristic folk, country and blues on 2003s It Still Moves to the hymnal pop breakthrough Z in 2005, to glamrock-escapades (Evil Urges) and lately a little progressive overload on 2011s Circuital: MY MORNING JACKET's hardly reducible to a certain image and sound. In fact, it's always been kind of hard to really like these changelings because one couldn't help but feel that Jim James and his band hadn't even begun to like themselves either. The Waterfall now has the potential to change this perception. Mainly because it's an exciting album in the best meaning of the word.

There's too little space here to describe all that's going on on The Waterfall. The changes in rhythm and dynamics alone would suffice for a proper musicological analysis. And, although the attitude of offering a whole spectrum of style and sound is not new to MY MORNING JACKET's output, they successfully bound it into a beautiful bouquet with this one. You could easily get lost in the details but you also might also simply enjoy Jim James crooning, whining, proclaiming his way through the depths of life, love, self-doubt and destiny. Starting with the hymnal opener Believe, growing into 80s pop in Compound Fractures and on into the psychedelic gospel of Like A River and In Its Infancy (The Waterfall), ending up somewhere within the epic Spring and the previously released, rather simple rock song Big Decisions: The Waterfall is so full of adventure, taking (and mastering) risks, richly textured and extremely well produced songs that it's a really liberating experience to listen to it.

The mystery of MY MORNING JACKET might be solved: there is none. This is a bunch of passionate, highly crafted and yes, at times also slightly too ambitious musicians. But they're willing to work hard on their tunes, melting their influences from 60s KING CRIMSON to contemporary soft rock and stripped-down Americana into glistening, odd but true songs. It helps of course to have a Jim James in front because his voice and presence alone justifies MY MORNING JACKET's high status in a live-business that's ruled by one-man-shows. But the reputation of being an excellent live band is also complemented by a great record this time – The Waterfall presents the Kentucky based bunch at their best and this is really something to look up to. Despite their current status of quite unlikely rockstars: they're up there for a reason.

Their seventh record presents the several shades of MY MORNING JACKET in a previously unachieved density.

MY MORNING JACKET

Metacritic

79

http://www.metacritic.com/music/the-waterfall/my-morning-jacket (http://www.metacritic.com/music/the-waterfall/my-morning-jacket)

Odd to see compound constantly referred to 80s synth pop. At OBh, it sounded like a badass rock song, and was the one I was most excited about on the new album.

http://diymag.com/2015/05/01/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-album-review (http://diymag.com/2015/05/01/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-album-review)

Album Review: My Morning Jacket - The Waterfall

An inviting record that will leave returning fans thankful for them not disappearing.
Label: ATO Records
Released: May 4, 2015
Reviewer: Ross Jones
Rating:
3 Stars

Having spent seventeen years together now, My Morning Jacket grew prominent in the genre-moulding 'indie rock' bracket that took over the US in the early to mid-2000s. Now releasing their seventh record, MMJ have returned as a group with the inevitable challenge of remaining relevant.

It's evident the primary influence of 'The Waterfall' is the location of which they recorded. Settling themselves in the idyllic Stinson Beach in California, they retain a calm and unhurried quality throughout, one not unfamiliar within their catalogue. Working alongside previous producer Tucker Martine (The Decemberists, Modest Mouse) adds to the warm familiarity, guiding the group in developing a pleasing exhibition in sonically illustrating one's surroundings. The 70s radio rock of 'Compound Fracture', and the mountainous-folk of 'Like A River', sway in a breeze of orchestral layering, steel chords and Jim James' broad vocal range, their music's most absorbing feature.

Throughout the record the group allude to a spiritual mysticism, sonically defining with refrains of eerie progressions in 'Tropics' and 'In It's Infancy (The Waterfall)'. What is most prevalent is how they seem cleansed and in the mood to again leisurely experiment. Yet when MMJ dwell in the americana pop rock of lead single 'Big Decisions', it pushes them out of their comfort zone. James' mawkish coo of "you're sweet, and sexy" feels a little outdated, an ominous example of attempting to reach out in a broader sense.

Through their time in Stinson, MMJ prosper by casually exploring within their familiar sound. While it perhaps won't warrant an influx of new listeners, 'The Waterfall' is an inviting record that will leave returning fans thankful for them not disappearing.

http://www.undertheradarmag.com/reviews/my_morning_jacket_the_waterfall/ (http://www.undertheradarmag.com/reviews/my_morning_jacket_the_waterfall/)

My Morning Jacket
The Waterfall
ATO/Capitol

May 01, 2015 Issue #53 - April/May 2015 - By Scott Dransfield

Jim James is rock music's leading mystic. For years, his lyrics have explored big philosophical questions, and contain frequent mentions of spiritual concepts. It follows, then, that the My Morning Jacket frontman is an expert at meditation; nobody would be surprised if the dude could teach a class on it. The Waterfall, My Morning Jacket's first album in four years, sounds as if the whole band retreated to an isolated meadow back in 2011 and has been meditating until now: it's clear, confident, and focused. It's also Jim James and company's best record since 2005's Z.

In reality, the band's members have actually been pretty busy since 2011's Circuital was released. Jim James released his solo debut, 2013's Regions of Light and Sound of God, and drummer Patrick Hallahan played on Spanish Gold's debut album. And while My Morning Jacket didn't quite meditate in a meadow, they did hole up in a studio on Northern California's Stinson Beach to record The Waterfall, a locale that supposedly inspired the bulk of the album's relaxed recording sessions. That inspiration is evident: "Like a River" and "Tropics (Erase Traces)" are freewheeling excursions, full of mystery and ready to soundtrack a walk on an isolated ocean shore.

It's not all mysticism and free-spirited natural beauty here, though. The Waterfall is filled to the brim with decades of classic rock, blue-eyed soul, and old-school folk influences. Lead single "Big Decisions" could be a lost single from The River-era Springsteen, complete with sax and piano. "Tropics (Erase Traces)" is downright Zeppelin-esque. Grandiosity is the name of the game for most of the 10-song album, as horns, strings, and vocal harmonies lift nearly every guitar riff and vocal melody into the stratosphere. Aesthetic elements aren't the only ones that sound so assured, either. The overall mood of The Waterfall is contented and optimistic, which is very satisfying after the sometimes troubled mindset of the band's past work.

Ultimately, The Waterfall is an exciting refresh for My Morning Jacket, especially considering that the band has hinted at a second album from these sessions on its way next year. It's a triumphant listen for longtime fans of the band, and hopefully it will perk up some new, fresh ears as well. We might not all get to hide away at a secluded studio on Stinson Beach, but My Morning Jacket have brought that grandeur to us.

Author rating: 8.5/10

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall--album-review-whirlpools-of-analogy-and-swirling-guitars-10217425.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall--album-review-whirlpools-of-analogy-and-swirling-guitars-10217425.html)

My Morning Jacket, The Waterfall - album review: Whirlpools of analogy and swirling guitars

4/5 stars

Having indulged his crypto-religious ruminations in 2013's solo opus magnum Regions of Light and Sound of God, prolific frontman Jim James returns to My Morning Jacket with his soul refreshed and ready for another tilt at the cosmic windmill.

Always prey to their psychedelic tendencies, here MMJ swallow the full tab and dive headfirst into a whirlpool of supposition, analogy and swirling guitars, pursuing "the answer [which] floats on down the farthest shore of the mind", as James puts it in the opener "Believe (Nobody Knows)". The song's claim that "nobody knows for sure" is rather undermined, however, by the stadium-sized self-belief of the arrangement, in which Garcia-esque guitar tendrils are bound to anthemic posturing on a Coldplay scale.

James's soulful falsetto vocals lend an ethereal tone to the spiritual musings of "Compound Fracture" and "Like a River": in the one hankering for a world where "there's no evil, there's no good, just people doing as they should", whilst, over gently juddering keyboard and eerily shivering string-synth, the other pursues its liquid metaphor for life through to a climactic wordless keening which evokes the tumble of a waterfall, neatly setting the scene for the ensuing "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)". Another smoke-wreathed reflection on the wheel of life, swathed in vibes and fizzing portamento synth, it's rather sabotaged by its own ambition, with too stilted shifts between its various sections.

The title "Big Decisions" suggests yet more philosophical speculation, but it turns out to be one side of a domestic dispute, with terse, chunky chording underscoring the protagonist's growing disaffection with always having to make the decisions and be Mr Nice Guy. It's perhaps the prequel to "Get The Point", which rakes regretfully over a collapsed romance, acoustic guitar and pedal steel treading lightly on spurned affections.

https://rollingstoneaus.com/reviews/post/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/1541

My Morning Jacket
The Waterfall Spunk /Capitol
My Morning Jacket

4 stars

by Darren Levin | April 30th, 2015 12:20:PM EST

Just as Rumours is inextricable from Sausalito, My Morning Jacket's seventh album is an aural postcard from California's Stinson Beach. There, in a vacation home cum studio perched over a hillside, Jim James and his crew of sonic cowboys were busy getting lost in their own mystical universe. They were so inspired, they made two albums: The Waterfall and another full-length release, due out next year.

Stinson Beach is world's apart – both geographically and spiritually – from the Kentucky church gym that birthed 2011's Circuital. And while that locale inspired MMJ to get back to their Southern roots, The Waterfall is their most sun-dappled Cali album yet. The Pacific Coast sound is all over the double-tracked guitars of "Thin Line" and the eerie finger-picked chords of "Like a River", which centres on James' reedy falsetto. It segues perfectly into "In Its Infancy", which is five-plus minutes of Zen-like bliss.

That's not to say this album is easy listening, or that the Eagles or America would ever attempt anything this whack. Thankfully, MMJ haven't lost the sense of adventure that made 2005's Z such a game-changing trip (case in point: the Eighties soft-pop of "Compound Fracture"). They might still lapse into safe ballad territory ("Get To the Point" is pretty, but virtually indistinguishable from "Wonderful" on Circuital), but it's their restless energy that makes MMJ such an exciting proposition from one album to the next.

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-album-review-1.2193584 (http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-album-review-1.2193584)

My Morning Jacket: The Waterfall | Album Review
Lauren Murphy
Fri, May 1, 2015, 17:00

4/5 stars

Why aren't My Morning Jacket a bigger band? Wait, that's actually an easy question to answer. Despite Jim James and Co's numerous Grammy nominations, truthfully it is over-ambition that has stymied the Kentucky band's progress over the course of their 17-year career. Such albums as 2003's It Still Moves and 2005's Z prised open the door to a new audience, but their tendency to embellish has meant that critical acclaim has never really translated into sales or a bona fide crossover to the mainstream.

By all accounts, this has never bothered the quintet – particularly James, who continues to indulge his manifold solo and side-projects to this day. His seventh album with My Morning Jacket is as sprawling a miscellany as what has come before, but this time it's inflected with prominent dashes of 1970s Californian rock.

It's a sound that's been audible throughout much of the band's previous material, but this time it can be attributed to the fact that The Waterfall was mostly recorded at the beautiful Stinson Beach in northern California. Songs like the slinky Only Memories Remain and In Its Infancy (The Waterfall) are particularly evocative of bands such as CSNY, Creedence and even The Eagles, the latter punctuated by dashes of psychedelia. The acoustic guitar of Get the Point is a foil for songs like the squally, spacey, overblown Tropics (Erase Traces) while the celebratory feel of colourful opener Believe – underlined by James's characteristically philosophical lyrics – is so ridiculous, you can't help but smile. The Waterfall won't be the album to make My Morning Jacket a household name, yet just like a carefully stitched patchwork quilt of styles, there is both comfort and huge enjoyment to be drawn from this album.

http://www.backseatmafia.com/2015/04/30/album-review-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/ (http://www.backseatmafia.com/2015/04/30/album-review-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/)

Album Review – My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall
Jon Bryan — April 30, 2015
8.3/10

After over a decade of following My Morning Jacket's career, I've come to terms with the fact that I'll prefer some of their albums over others, and oddly enough that's lead to me anticipating their new albums more keenly than I do most other acts. One of the thing's I've always admired about MMJ is the fact that you're never quite sure which version of themselves they'll turn out to be on their next album. From jam-heavy extended song-structures, to more concise and direct rockers, to flirting with the alt-country sound, to classic Southern Rock, MMJ are a band with an enviable bag of tricks and they have a wonderful knack for being able to vary their approach to cosmic americana, and yet retain a unique sonic identity.

The Waterfall bursts into life with the synthetic bubbles that open "Believe (Nobody Knows)", a surging mass of positivity with a vast chorus. As an opener it's a rather wonderful statement of intent and builds the anticipation that maybe, just maybe, The Waterfall might be My Morning Jacket's most satisfying album to date. It's a feeling backed up by the heart-swelling pop rock of "Compound Fracture". Yeah, on the strength of this opening duo The Waterfall is promising to be my favourite MMJ album so far.

Then it all starts to flake away. The next couple of songs, although decent enough MMJ songs, just don't make much of an impression on me, and it's only the change of pace that the pretty "Get the Point" brings that makes sure that the rest of the album doesn't just all fade together, resulting in a relatively disappointing alt-rock album. Where are the great accessible rock tunes like "Holdin' On to Black Metal" and "Outta My System" on Circuital, or "What a Wonderful Man" on Z? The Waterfall is a beautiful sounding album, but it sort of fails to make a lasting impact.

Oh, I'm sure it wasn't supposed to be like that.

The thing is, I would have left it that, if it wasn't for the fact that The Waterfall has little musical barbs, great moments that kept pulling me back in to listen to it again. And again. And yet again. Each time it left slightly more of a positive impression on me.

Then I understood.

The Waterfall is a fine example of a rare beast in today's music – it's a grower. Too many times an act puts out an album which initially makes a big impression when you first encounter it, but ultimately fades away from your memory far quicker than you would expect it to. The Waterfall does the opposite of that, pulling of the neat trick of slowly revealing its increasingly interesting qualities over time, to the point where you listen to it with greater frequency, as it gently burrows its way into your psyche, waiting for you to realise what a truly satisfying and well-balanced album it is as you allow its rich loamy textures to envelope you.

For me it was "Get the Point" that was key to unlocking the rest of The Waterfall. Initial listens had left me with the impression that it was merely a pretty break-up tune, but as I listened to it with greater frequency, it revealed just what a gorgeously fractured and broken-hearted song it was, as it reaches in and reminds you that some break ups are for the best and that some people don't stop loving each other, but that for reasons beyond anyone's control, their relationships just flounder and expire. If you nail a song like that as well as MMJ have here, it isn't just pretty, it's emotionally devastating.

Once The Waterfall has started revealing its greatness, it becomes quite the generous spirited album, as tunes like "Thin Line" and "In its Infancy (The Waterfall)" will start to rise rapidly from your subconscious regardless of the time of day and a song like "Like a River" handsomely repay the amount of time you invest in it. A personal favourite of mine has become "Big Decisions", a wonderful tune and the album's lead single, which almost completely passed me by the first couple of times I heard it, but has slowly but surely become the centrepiece of the second half of the album for me.

My Morning Jacket remain the type of band that music fans can have a proper relationship with, in that not all of their albums will appeal to all elements of their audience. That is in no way a bad thing, as it means that they have a lot more to offer than your average alt-rock act, and hey, if you weren't so enamoured with their last album, their next two might be more your thing. This approach gives MMJ scope to grow and develop without feeling that they need to stick to one specific formula to retain the interest of their fanbase, indeed their fans remain pleasingly open to the prospect of MMJ switching things around as their creative muse shifts from time to time. This willingness to follow their muse in whatever direction has been a hallmark of My Morning Jacket's career to date, and on the strength of The Waterfall, it's an approach which continues to pay dividends for everyone involved.

Quote from: johnnYYac on May 01, 2015, 01:20 PM
http://www.backseatmafia.com/2015/04/30/album-review-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/ (http://www.backseatmafia.com/2015/04/30/album-review-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/)

Album Review – My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall
Jon Bryan — April 30, 2015
8.3/10

After over a decade of following My Morning Jacket's career, I've come to terms with the fact that I'll prefer some of their albums over others, and oddly enough that's lead to me anticipating their new albums more keenly than I do most other acts. One of the thing's I've always admired about MMJ is the fact that you're never quite sure which version of themselves they'll turn out to be on their next album. From jam-heavy extended song-structures, to more concise and direct rockers, to flirting with the alt-country sound, to classic Southern Rock, MMJ are a band with an enviable bag of tricks and they have a wonderful knack for being able to vary their approach to cosmic americana, and yet retain a unique sonic identity.

The Waterfall bursts into life with the synthetic bubbles that open "Believe (Nobody Knows)", a surging mass of positivity with a vast chorus. As an opener it's a rather wonderful statement of intent and builds the anticipation that maybe, just maybe, The Waterfall might be My Morning Jacket's most satisfying album to date. It's a feeling backed up by the heart-swelling pop rock of "Compound Fracture". Yeah, on the strength of this opening duo The Waterfall is promising to be my favourite MMJ album so far.

Then it all starts to flake away. The next couple of songs, although decent enough MMJ songs, just don't make much of an impression on me, and it's only the change of pace that the pretty "Get the Point" brings that makes sure that the rest of the album doesn't just all fade together, resulting in a relatively disappointing alt-rock album. Where are the great accessible rock tunes like "Holdin' On to Black Metal" and "Outta My System" on Circuital, or "What a Wonderful Man" on Z? The Waterfall is a beautiful sounding album, but it sort of fails to make a lasting impact.

Oh, I'm sure it wasn't supposed to be like that.

The thing is, I would have left it that, if it wasn't for the fact that The Waterfall has little musical barbs, great moments that kept pulling me back in to listen to it again. And again. And yet again. Each time it left slightly more of a positive impression on me.

Then I understood.

The Waterfall is a fine example of a rare beast in today's music – it's a grower. Too many times an act puts out an album which initially makes a big impression when you first encounter it, but ultimately fades away from your memory far quicker than you would expect it to. The Waterfall does the opposite of that, pulling of the neat trick of slowly revealing its increasingly interesting qualities over time, to the point where you listen to it with greater frequency, as it gently burrows its way into your psyche, waiting for you to realise what a truly satisfying and well-balanced album it is as you allow its rich loamy textures to envelope you.

For me it was "Get the Point" that was key to unlocking the rest of The Waterfall. Initial listens had left me with the impression that it was merely a pretty break-up tune, but as I listened to it with greater frequency, it revealed just what a gorgeously fractured and broken-hearted song it was, as it reaches in and reminds you that some break ups are for the best and that some people don't stop loving each other, but that for reasons beyond anyone's control, their relationships just flounder and expire. If you nail a song like that as well as MMJ have here, it isn't just pretty, it's emotionally devastating.

Once The Waterfall has started revealing its greatness, it becomes quite the generous spirited album, as tunes like "Thin Line" and "In its Infancy (The Waterfall)" will start to rise rapidly from your subconscious regardless of the time of day and a song like "Like a River" handsomely repay the amount of time you invest in it. A personal favourite of mine has become "Big Decisions", a wonderful tune and the album's lead single, which almost completely passed me by the first couple of times I heard it, but has slowly but surely become the centrepiece of the second half of the album for me.

My Morning Jacket remain the type of band that music fans can have a proper relationship with, in that not all of their albums will appeal to all elements of their audience. That is in no way a bad thing, as it means that they have a lot more to offer than your average alt-rock act, and hey, if you weren't so enamoured with their last album, their next two might be more your thing. This approach gives MMJ scope to grow and develop without feeling that they need to stick to one specific formula to retain the interest of their fanbase, indeed their fans remain pleasingly open to the prospect of MMJ switching things around as their creative muse shifts from time to time. This willingness to follow their muse in whatever direction has been a hallmark of My Morning Jacket's career to date, and on the strength of The Waterfall, it's an approach which continues to pay dividends for everyone involved.

My favorite review so far...

decent enough review but I think "Outta My System"  and "Black Metal" are two of the worst songs on Circuital. 

Opinions are like...

I will say, there are two reviews up there that seem to have been written by middle-schoolers.  How do some of these people get paid to write?  Where are the editors?

Quote from: gardenparty on May 01, 2015, 06:52 PM
decent enough review but I think "Outta My System"  and "Black Metal" are two of the worst songs on Circuital.

Hahaha, yeah I chuckled.  Everyone is looking for something different I guess.

One thing he is dead on about... the "musical barbs."  When I had a conversation with my best friend about the album after a couple of listens (he's also a big fan), i initially referred to these moments as "redeeming qualities."  At the time, I was not over the moon about some of the songs.  But as the writer also experienced, i kept getting sucked back into it and wanting more and more..  This is also somewhat how i experienced Evil Urges and Circuital but quite honestly nothing has been like this.  It's just so beautiful and full of life and at times it just doesn't even feel like intentionally played music, just the sound and vibrations of life through the lens of a small group of very sensitive, yet assertively exploring individuals. 

Review: My Morning Jacket Stays True to Its Strengths on 'The Waterfall'

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/arts/music/review-my-morning-jacket-stays-true-to-its-strengths-on-the-waterfall.html?_r=0 (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/arts/music/review-my-morning-jacket-stays-true-to-its-strengths-on-the-waterfall.html?_r=0)

MY MORNING JACKET
"The Waterfall"
(ATO/Capital)

The hum of an everyday mysticism has always been part of the deal for My Morning Jacket, but it resonates louder than usual on "The Waterfall." Don't mistake it for a problem. All those lyrics about openness, about flow, about mind-body dualism — they suit this band perfectly, along with cavernous reverb and heavy-foot midrange tempos.

That much becomes clear on the album's curtain-raiser, "Believe (Nobody Knows)," whose title effectively spoils the plot. "Believe," Jim James urges four times in the chorus, ascending halfway up a major scale. Then, with feeling: "Nobody knows!" Is that an admission? A reassurance? It doesn't matter; Mr. James is saying, as succinctly as he can, that the absence of proof lays the bedrock for belief.

"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. Like the band's 2011 album, "Circuital," which was a self-conscious return to form after some clanky experiments, this one was produced by Mr. James with the engineer Tucker Martine.

The band — Mr. James and Carl Broemel on guitars, Tom Blankenship on bass, Bo Koster on keyboards and Patrick Hallahan on drums — long ago set the hazy but four-square dimensions of its style. Some of these tracks, like "Compound Fracture," evoke 1970s commercial rock, complete with blended "oohs." (Among the backup singers are Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes and Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards.) Other tracks, like "Spring (Among the Living)," which gravely hails the changing of the seasons, feel designed for maximum liftoff on big stages — My Morning Jacket has dozens of tour dates in its near-future, including appearances at the Governors Ball (June 5) and Bonnaroo (June 13). It's easy to envision "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)" in such settings: it opens with a round of ceremonial accents, like the ringing of a gong, and the main beat kicks in at the chorus, after two and a half minutes of buildup.

Given that Mr. James is the principal source of earnest wonderment in the band, it's startling to come across "Get the Point," a polite-but-firm breakup song, and "Big Decisions," in which he exasperatedly sings "I don't quite feel like faking it again tonight." A deceptively easygoing tune called "Thin Line" hinges on a refrain sung in a buttery falsetto: "Well it's a thin line / Between lovin' and wasting my time."

And the album closes with "Only Memories Remain," a bittersweet ballad in the style of George Harrison, one of Mr. James's acknowledged models. It's a relationship elegy — but also a fond remembrance, and a reminder that love, too, should be a leap of faith.

My Morning Jacket- The Waterfall (ALBUM REVIEW)

http://www.glidemagazine.com/134852/morning-jacket-waterfall-album-review/ (http://www.glidemagazine.com/134852/morning-jacket-waterfall-album-review/)

8/10 stars

It's been over a decade since It Still Moves, the arguable pinnacle of My Morning Jacket's discography, and in the interim (with the benefit of that proverbial hindsight), the experimentation on Z and Evil Urges  might well has been left for titular leader Jim James' solo effort Regions of Light and Sound (or the spectacular stage presentations the band conducted in 2008 at Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden). In making 2011′s Circuital, the band exerted great effort to streamline their sound and regain its rootsy flavor and while The Waterfall continues in that direction, here MMJ more thoroughly integrates the modern R & B, soul and folk influences within their readily identifiable style.

"Big Decisions" was an appropriate choice for the first track released and not just because its grandeur so favorably echoed the band's past without overdoing it. Making this album was a serendipitous event for My Morning Jacket, arising from the group's entrancement with the Panoramic House studio in northern California where it was recorded, and as such, the quintet didn't have an opportunity to over-think the project and become self- conscious as on the last record. Certainly, "Believe (Nobody Knows) has that rare balance of precision and abandon that comes from residing in the moment: guitar lines ascend parallel to vocals led by Jim James' familiarly echoed tenor.

And while that track begins with the bubble of electronic sounds, it's the scythe-like edge of electric guitars that dominate the track. Despite the insinuating falsetto of the leader's singing on "Compound Fracture," in combination with the similarly seductive background harmonies, the heartbeat drumming of Patrick Hallahan captures attention here, at least until the liquid keyboard notes struck by Bo Koster enter the arrangement. Within seconds, that recording ends in the same economical fashion as most of the others, to be followed in short order with the gentle acoustic guitar picking of "Like A River."

Here, wordless singing meshes in perfect proportion with floating synthetic sounds that segue into "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall).") Multi-instrumentalist Carl Broemel dominates this cut with his understated leads and fills plus the insistent rhythm guitar he plays, so much so he overshadows both Koester and James, but not Hallahan and bassist Tom Blankenship: co-producer Tucker Martine makes sure the mix rightfully highlights the burly rhythm section and in so doing, he grounds the band's musicianship, maintaining a tactile presence on even the lightest textures.

The Waterfall may feature Jim James' most direct personal expression, at least as contained on the unplugged balladry of  "Get The Point," where his well-wishing underscores the finality of its kiss-off sentiment. A curiously familiar melody has its almost but not quite predictable changes effectively diluted through sharp pedal steel a skillful set-up to the subsequent track, "Spring (Among the Living)," which also functions as a major transition for the album. Artificial strings cover stuttering beats while the drama grows in the lead vocals, the momentum of which becomes accelerated through drop outs in the arrangement which further create a positive tension and release dynamic.

Within ten tracks total and a running time of less than an hour, "Thin Line" is really the only other cut besides the aforementioned single that directly recalls the previous work of My Morning Jacket. It's hard not to long for a more extended improvisational section on this cut, but the contrast between the passages of dream-like quiet and thunderous crescendos make "Tropics (Erase Traces)"  wholly arresting.  As is the longest piece here, "Only Memories Remain" its thoroughly gentle atmosphere as heady as it is haunting – whether played at a high enough volume (or on headphones). The track's all enveloping ambiance  seems to set the stage for a more forceful climax, but the absence of a genuine knockout punch is in keeping with My Morning Jacket's willful decision not to do the expected or conventional on The Waterfall.

My Morning Jacket's 'The Waterfall' flows with hope and brilliance (album review)

http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2015/05/my_morning_jacket_finds_hope_a.html (http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2015/05/my_morning_jacket_finds_hope_a.html)

CLEVELAND, Ohio – My Morning Jacket has been one of rock's greatest shape shifters of the past decade.
MMJtheWaterfall.jpgMy Morning Jacket - "The Waterfall"ATO Records

The Kentucky act once unfairly labeled a jam-band has branched out into everything from psychedelic rock ("Z"), and indie-soul ("Evil Urges") to strange space-rock ("Circuital"). MMJ's latest effort, "The Waterfall," takes all of those influences and merges them into the band's most complete album in a decade.

The basis for "Waterfall" is heartbreak and exhaustion. Frontman Jim James found himself inspired by feelings of being rundown, disappointment and relationship woes. Yet, "Waterfall" centers on hope.

The album opens with "Believe (Nobody Knows)," a sprawling southern jam driven by James and Carl Broemel's amazing guitars. Likewise, "Like a River" references the rough journey to a metaphorical home, as James makes use of his fantastic falsetto.

Even "The Waterfall's" most depressing track, "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)," offers optimism with James singing, "Again, I stop the waterfall by just believing." "In Its Infancy" is the album's best track, beginning as a dark manifesto before evolving into a triumphant southern-blues masterpiece.

Musically, "The Waterfall" is both diverse and cohesive. James and company's palate ranges from beautiful folk ("Get The Point") and enticing R&B ("Thin Line") to psychedelic brilliance ("Only Memories Remain"). It never once ceases to be engaging.

MMJ has plans to release another album before the end of the year. Based on "The Waterfall," I say keep it coming. Grade: B+

MMJ gets back to nature with 'Waterfall'

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/entertainment/music/2015/05/04/morning-jacket-waterfall/26865249/ (http://www.courier-journal.com/story/entertainment/music/2015/05/04/morning-jacket-waterfall/26865249/)

A lot of things go into making an album, not all of them intentional. The key, apparently, is to keep an open mind, roll with the punches and make sure you pick a really beautiful place to record.

When Louisville's My Morning Jacket convened in late 2013 at Panoramic House, a quietly grand studio overlooking Stinson Beach in Northern California, they began with a tall stack of mostly skeletal song ideas written by Jim James and no real expectations.

James, Tom Blankenship, Patrick Hallahan, Bo Koster and Carl Broemel dove in, ready for anything, and they got it: a personal record 18 months from first session to last, a debilitating back injury for James, and, finally, enough material for two albums.

"The Waterfall" was released Monday to great acclaim, and a second full-length will follow later this year.

"When we went out to Stinson Beach, I feel like we lived a lifetime, at least for me," James said. "I feel like I experienced every emotion that you could experience, except maybe giving birth to a child, thank God.

"Other than that, I experienced joy and love and sadness and I threw out my back ... so I experienced the greatest pain I've ever had in my life. It was a bunch of really intense things but also really beautiful. It was like we lived on our own little moon or something."

Stinson Beach wound up becoming almost a sixth band member. Everyone bunked in two beach houses, and long walks to and from the studio each day allowed the tranquility of the oceanside setting to seep into the music. Nature imagery pops up throughout the album, as does a sense of new beginnings.

Stinson Beach, Blankenship said, is where the story of "The Waterfall" starts.

"Once we got out there and got a feel for how crazy beautiful, serene and quiet that area is, that's where the story really starts," Blankenship said. "When I listen to the record it just sounds like Stinson Beach. It sounds like a sunset out there."

"The spirit of this album was so natural and the energy so forward that we could have kept going on forever," Hallahan said.

"The Waterfall" is My Morning Jacket's seventh studio album and first for Capitol Records in partnership with their longtime label, ATO. In many ways the band, which started in 1998, has had an ideal career. It has never had less than complete artistic control, is covered incessantly by the national music press and boasts a fiercely loyal fan base.

But those fans aren't always happy. My Morning Jacket's last two albums, 2008's "Evil Urges" and 2011's "Circuital," both debuted in the top 10 of Billboard's album charts, but neither sold in huge numbers; and there were grumblings about the band's excursions into dance music and general weirdness (neither of which should have been much of a surprise).

Sessions for "The Waterfall" resulted in plenty of (probably weird) dance music, but James felt it was better served on its own album. He wondered if first putting out a more rock-oriented collection might not appeal to old-school fans, while a second album would be a bonus round for the more adventurous.

"It may be a pointless experiment, but I was curious to see what would happen," he said. "I thought it would be cool to have one that didn't have any dance- or soul-based stuff on it, and then follow it up with one that was completely dance- and soul-based."

"The Waterfall" is a big-sounding album that deals with big ideas on scales large and small. Like all My Morning Jacket records, it reflects James' ongoing explorations into both music history and spiritual matters.

But where past records tended to simply ask questions, "The Waterfall" finds James offering some tentative answers about how to maintain momentum in a world built on a foundation of mysteries.

"I feel like I still don't know how to explain anything, but I have accepted that, I guess, and I'm just trying to live," he said.

Jeffrey Lee Puckett can be reached at (502) 582-4160, jpuckett@courier-journal.com and on Twitter, @JLeePuckett.

Quote from: johnnYYac on May 04, 2015, 12:28 PM

Sessions for "The Waterfall" resulted in plenty of (probably weird) dance music, but James felt it was better served on its own album. He wondered if first putting out a more rock-oriented collection might not appeal to old-school fans, while a second album would be a bonus round for the more adventurous.

"It may be a pointless experiment, but I was curious to see what would happen," he said. "I thought it would be cool to have one that didn't have any dance- or soul-based stuff on it, and then follow it up with one that was completely dance- and soul-based."

Woah!   Is this the first nugget of info we have gotten about the remaining tracks?

Very interesting, the next one could end up being less rock-oriented than anything they have ever done. 

The Observer (UK): http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/03/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-review-compound-fracture (http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/03/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-review-compound-fracture)

My Morning Jacket: The Waterfall review – initially endearing, lacklustre later
3 / 5 stars
(ATO)

Paul Mardles

Sunday 3 May 2015 08.00 BST

Once noted for their space-rock jams, Kentucky five-piece My Morning Jacket have branched out in recent years, embracing 1980s funk and AOR to the chagrin of many longtime fans. The Waterfall, the first of two MMJ albums scheduled for release in the next 12 months or so, contains traces of their old expansive sound, though elastic soul and soft rock dominate. The first few tracks, particularly the Prince-like Compound Fracture, are endearingly spacious and snake-hipped, but The Waterfall's lacklustre second half indicates they've lost touch with the band they once were.

Here's a great longform piece from Stereogum that reviews the new album, but also kinda looks at MMJ in the context of the musical landscape of today:
http://www.stereogum.com/1799475/opening-the-world-again-my-morning-jackets-the-waterfall-and-the-new-americana/franchises/essay/ (http://www.stereogum.com/1799475/opening-the-world-again-my-morning-jackets-the-waterfall-and-the-new-americana/franchises/essay/)

My Morning Jacket: Renewal from The Waterfall
By Ryan Reed
May 5, 2015

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/05/my-morning-jacket-renewal-from-the-waterfall-1.html?utm_source=PMNL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=150505 (http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/05/my-morning-jacket-renewal-from-the-waterfall-1.html?utm_source=PMNL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=150505)

"Whenever I see a waterfall in nature, I always have this weird impulse of wanting to stop it—like pausing a video," says Jim James, reflecting on the title of My Morning Jacket's seventh LP. "I've always loved the beauty of a giant waterfall, but standing in front of one is very overwhelming. There's nothing you can do about it."

There's something sinister about the weight of an unending stream, the relentlessness of its force. And the singer/songwriter, 37, spends most of his waking hours trying to slow down the one in his brain. "The waterfall, can it be stopped?" he sings on The Waterfall's sprawling pseudo-title cut, his golden yelp gliding over psychedelic guitar riffs and spiraling synths.

"We should all strive to constantly be reborn," James says. One of his favorite concepts is "the beginner's mind, of trying to be a child every day in some new way." So when his band isn't headlining festivals or selling out theaters, he's likely hiking as he hums a new melody to himself—or maybe sprawled out in the grass by his Louisville home, trying to glimpse the divine in the ordinary.

"I feel very overwhelmed with life a lot of the time, and I feel like there's nothing I can do to make my life more peaceful or get it all to slow down," he continues. "Then you try to find these ways to stop it all peacefully: meditating, going for a walk, all these things that involve nature and disconnecting in a certain way from the world—but in a good way. It's so healing for people. In the age of being trapped in cubicles with computers against our faces, getting into nature is the ultimate experience in life."

The Waterfall explores that struggle in-depth. Throughout its 10 winding songs, James sings about physical injury (space-pop banger "Compound Fracture"), romantic turmoil (country-tinged break-up ballad "Get the Point"), spiritual yearning (sunny sing-along "Believe (Nobody Knows)")—and emerges with a simple yet abstract answer: "Again I stop the waterfall by finally feeling / Again I stop the waterfall by just believing."

The album's central theme is renewal, starting over. James promises he's "done hibernating" on heavy epic "Spring (Among the Living)," and even at its darkest, the songs carry that sense of baptismal uplift. That sense of grandeur is nothing new for the quintet, a live act that transforms every venue into a church. But the stakes feel bigger than ever on The Waterfall.

James has always chased his own spacey intuition. He formed My Morning Jacket in 1998, idiosyncratically christening the band after discovering a discarded coat embroidered with the letters MMJ. Channeling the raw emotive power of Neil Young, he wrote Jacket's 1999 debut, That Tennessee Fire, and recorded most of his reverb-smothered vocals in an empty grain silo. That lonesome sound—James' voice echoing into the ether—is now almost mythic. But he's never been defined by that accidental trademark.

My Morning Jacket's critical breakthrough, 2005's Z, cemented their status as America's resident art-rock icons, as they blended Flying V hard-rock with Floydian psychedelia, spastic soul and symphonic bombast. ("America is a lot closer to getting its own Radiohead, and it isn't Wilco," David Fricke wrote in his Rolling Stone review.) It also cemented the band's line-up, with guitarist-saxophonist Carl Broemel and keyboardist Bo Koster joining James, bassist Tom Blankenship and drummer Patrick Hallahan.

That quintet released two more albums, 2008's polarizing Evil Urges and 2011's measured Circuital—but they always earned their widest acclaim on-stage. The band's show-stopping 2008 Bonnaroo performance is now the stuff of legend: James and company crammed their set with rare tracks and left-field covers (from Erykah Badu to The Velvet Underground), stretching out close to four hours. In 2013, Rolling Stone named MMJ the planet's 10th-best live band.

Now, with The Waterfall, they've recaptured the boundless energy and wind-blown freedom of their stage show. And most of that spirit can be traced directly to the idyllic Panoramic House Studios at Stinson Beach, California, where the band recorded most of its songs—starting with a series of sessions in October 2013. Illuminated by the property's West coast glow, they worked on music during the day, cooked communal meals in the evenings and often walked the beach.

"It just had a really magical air, like being on another planet," James says. "It was like we were on the moon or something—it feels like you're so high up in the air, and everything there's so massive. You're right next to Muir Woods, and the trees are really massive. The beach is really massive, and the sunsets are massive. Everything is so broad and epic, and it just brought this surreal quality to the whole thing. It made us feel like we had our own colony on another planet or something. You can see the ocean from the studio, but you're up on this hillside. We were isolated with just our little group, but we had all of nature there with us. It was a really comforting place to be."

That paradise was temporarily marred when James, attempting to move an amplifier, suffered a herniated disc. He struggled to record, often tracking his vocal parts while laying on a studio couch—but after surgery and a two-month recovery process, the frontman regrouped with the band, winding up with more songs than he could even fit on two albums. (The next My Morning Jacket LP is planned for 2016, and James is also at work on a solo LP—a follow-up to his 2013 debut, Regions of Light and Sound of God.)

Some Waterfall material—like the barnburner "Big Decisions"—was recorded in Louisville, some at producer-engineer Tucker Martine's Flora studio in Portland. It was a fractured but fulfilling process: "Believe" was the very last song James wrote during the sessions, and it wound up being the crucial opener. "It's weird because it's like putting together a puzzle," James says of the sequencing. "For a while, 'Spring' was the first song, and that was back before 'Believe' existed. But ['Believe'] just felt like more of a clean slate beginning—it set a more positive tone. I originally picked 'Spring' because it has a real mysterious tone. It's a positive song, too, but it can be a bit confusing."

Unlike Circuital, which was recorded live to tape as a full-band, The Waterfall was partially constructed by James with computer technology—splicing random sections together into sonic tapestries.

"I would say 80 percent was stuff I wrote after Circuital and the solo record. But there are always a couple nuggets from five or 10 years ago on each record. Some ideas will poke their head out, and I'll find them again—sometimes accidentally, from my music collection being on random, one will pop up. That's kind of cool because there all these little ideas, and I might have one I really love from 10 years ago but didn't have any lyrics for it or know where it should go. Something will come up on random, and I'll think, 'Oh, I love that guitar part I wrote 10 years ago and didn't know what to do with,' and, 'Oh, weird, it's in the same key as this song.' For whatever reason, I feel like the universe guides you toward what you need to find."

As usual, most of the ideas originated from cell phone voice memo fragments, which James sent to the band as rough demos. This time around, instead of rehearsing the songs to death, he focused more on spontaneity—capturing a vibe in the moment, then figuring out the logistics later.

"We used to have a big rehearsal period and would leave and come back to record," he says. "I've done away with that because I think it's more fun to start doing it all at once and start recording. You get the best of both worlds. Some songs are way better in the early stages with less time put into them, and other songs are better with tons of time put into them. If we get a song early on, great, we've got it. And if it takes a long time, it takes a long time."

Soulful lullaby "Thin Line," the album's oldest track, began life "five or six years ago" but was shelved when James couldn't figure out how to finish it. Then Blankenship stumbled upon an additional riff on his computer, and the other pieces fell into place. Another great example is the proggy "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)," which veers from ominous synths to twangy folk to churning space-rock.

"I knew it should all go together, but I didn't know how," James says of the latter epic. "I was obsessed with this idea of a song being built from unrelated elements that become related. The different pieces of the song I wrote at different times, but they told me they should be connected. I had this idea that a song doesn't always have to be this thing you sit down and write with verses and choruses. We're at the crossroads of the world where we can still record live performances on tape, but you can take those performances and put them in the computer and do new things with them that you could never do on tape."

But for all its technical wizardry, The Waterfall never feels synthetic or piecemeal (as did the low-points of Evil Urges or Regions of Light). It's one man's 48-minute catharsis backed by hypnotic sonic color.

On "Believe," James sounds enraptured, belting over Koster's carnival-like keys as he encourages people to put their faith in something—anything—that helps push back the waterfall for another day.

"I just feel like everybody should be free to choose whatever it is they believe, and whatever feels right to you should be fine," he says. "There's been so much damage done in the name of religion throughout the course of humanity in a quest to figure out why we're here and what it all means and what we should believe. Should we believe what we've been taught to believe, or should we believe what we feel in our hearts to be true?

Everybody should be free to believe what they think they think is true without persecution—as long as they're not hurting anybody else or persecuting anybody else. If people could just let each other have that, the world would be a more peaceful place. But you get into organized religion as big business, and I don't think a lot of people think about that side of the coin. You think about a giant business that doesn't want to go out of business or lose its money and its foothold in the world. There's a lot of chaos and greed in religion because they want your soul and your wallet. There's been so much damage done. So that song is about believing what you want to believe because nobody really knows anything. Nobody's going to prove anything—at least they haven't yet."

"The waterfall, can it be stopped?"

Probably not. But James keeps searching—through meditation, through romantic love, through nature, through the cosmic warmth of My Morning Jacket.

"I have a lot of respect and love for the people who were in the band before," he says, surveying the current quintet's decade-long run. "But once it got to this line-up, that's where it wanted to be with its own force. This is definitely the band, and anything that changed from this line-up wouldn't be the band anymore."

My Morning Jacket's 'The Waterfall' Can Beat You Down Or Lift You Up

Listen here: www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html (http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=404423143&m=404483338)

The title of the new My Morning Jacket album, The Waterfall, is a metaphor for life beating you down. That's what frontman Jim James told Rolling Stone magazine. But in a gentler sense, the music itself is kind of like a waterfall — cascading notes, opaque layers of sound, and rippling arrangements that can bend or break the verse-chorus structure of traditional rock songs.

There's an appealing inscrutability to the music of My Morning Jacket that continues on The Waterfall. The band has always plied decades' worth of rock, country, soul and jammy psychedelia without being any one of those things. And even though James' enigmatic vocals have wound their way through seven albums with My Morning Jacket, the things he can do with his voice grow increasingly remarkable. In "Believe (Nobody Knows)," he tucks words into unexpected points, toying with his phrasing in a way that adds weight to the overarching philosophy of his lyrics.

Beneath My Morning Jacket's musical strata is a deeply ingrained spirituality, and on The Waterfall, it's directed toward the natural world. But even as he ponders the inevitability of nature, James points to the things we can control — the direction our lives will go, and maybe even our own happiness. After all, a waterfall can beat you down if you're standing right under it, but take a few steps back and it just might prove inspirational.

My Morning Jacket opens a vein and lets its rhythmic insides flow

http://www.avclub.com/review/my-morning-jacket-opens-vein-and-lets-its-rhythmic-218572 (http://www.avclub.com/review/my-morning-jacket-opens-vein-and-lets-its-rhythmic-218572)

Grade: B

Jim James has become an unashamed sentimentalist. On My Morning Jacket's 2005 major-label release, Z, the band's frontman reared his thoughts upward with a spiritual tilt, molding them around godly references. Now, his focus is inward, musing on beliefs that pray for self-realization. As he sings to open The Waterfall, MMJ's seventh album, "Roll the dice, set sail the ship, and all the doors will open." Part bravado, part confessional, part purifying, The Waterfall is as open as oblivion, empathy, love, and misery.

What then does James believe these doors will open? Only everything—every little smudged feeling of his heart, head, and libido. In the past, James' own sprawling tone and frantic approach to genre-hopping have occasionally been reduced to a menagerie of indefinable quirks—easy to like, but sometimes difficult to internalize.

The Waterfall should shift the tide and change that. One quick skim of the track list reads like the stages of love, with songs like "Believe (Nobody Knows)," "Get The Point," "Thin Line," "Big Decisions," and "Only Memories Remain." The result achieves a balance that many long-term successful relationships reach, bands included: comfort in the familiar, but with an overwhelming desire for discovery and adventure.

As usual, My Morning Jacket sounds foreign on the first listen, but fluent by the fourth or fifth. The real magic is in James' voice or, rather, voices: "Compound Fracture" finds the vein between '60s-era Serge Gainsbourg and Marvin Gaye's falsetto, and modern synth meets "Heart Of Gold"'s Neil Young. Over a mounting riff, James offers one of his most urgent hooks. There's passion and hope as he cheekily sings, "Get as much as you can keep around" before "Like A River" flows in, rerouting placid jazzy acoustics with quick-click drum jolts and James' lacerated wail. A repeated word, "again," becomes a mantra summoning turmoil on top of heavy fuzz during "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)." The warbling jittery Led Zep-like guitar underlies the refrain while the song's parts duel until reaching a bottleneck stranded by reverb. As much as James has a reputation as a burly guitar hero, he brings a folky gravitas to the album's simpler standouts, giving songs like the tragic "Get The Point" a Marshall Tucker Band vintage hue. Album highlight "Spring (Among the Living)" slams in with slow swelling electric guitar, clanging through metallic chunks, wheeling listeners back and forth across livened rattling drums. A roar in James' throat is backed by a cluster of horns all swarming in support, like a safety net harnessing all the elements together.

Not all of the record's songs are as visceral. The tricky tonal tempos that underpin "Big Decisions" don't stand a chance next to scorched-earth anthems like "Tropics (Erase Traces)," with throngs of vocals so wounded they sound like James would rather push every last groan out of his body than absorb the feelings he's trying to vent. The decisive moment comes at the end of the record, with "Only Memories Remain" emerging like a figure in the fog: a bed thickly coated with '70s funk melodies, and vivid contours that sound soothing and firm. When the beat stretches its limbs, the track becomes the most content My Morning Jacket has sounded in a while.

Gripping and in waves, The Waterfall might not be a classic, but it still suggests that after nearly two decades fans don't know every side of My Morning Jacket. Luckily, they keep opening new doors for us to explore.

http://diffuser.fm/album-review-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/ (http://diffuser.fm/album-review-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/)

As any familiar listener already knows, My Morning Jacket have long harbored an affinity for recording in environments that create a tangible sense of the music echoing through a physical space. As the Louisville, Ky.-based quintet's career has progressed, its albums have sounded less and less like the band was recorded live from inside a cavern and more like bandleader Jim James has learned to apply the sonic character of the room onto specific instruments. Along the way, My Morning Jacket have, to varying degrees, flirted with pop and then pulled back again; they've also incorporated touches of jazz and R&B. For their last album, 2011′s Circuital, Jones and company opted once again for a live-in-a-big-room approach, but the final mixes contained more texture than early efforts such as their 1999 debut The Tennessee Fire and its follow-up, 2001′s At Dawn.

This time around, for their seventh studio album The Waterfall, it's clear from the opening note that My Morning Jacket have learned to use space as just one element in their sonic palette, rather than as the single most prominent factor. James opens The Waterfall with the verses, "The answer floats on down the farthest shore of the mind / Roll the dice and sail the ship and all the doors will open" — essentially an announcement that he's employing water symbolism to illustrate the sense of uncertainty he felt while writing this new material. Musically, though, My Morning Jacket have never sounded so decisive. After going back and forth between gritty roots-psychedelia and pop polish, MMJ land smack in the middle with The Waterfall – arguably nailing the best qualities of both.

They also end up with the most varied album of their career. One of the most striking things about this new set of songs is how effortlessly they flow into one another without the album ever starting to sound complacent. From falsetto "woo-woo" hooks on "Compound Fracture" to grand, folky soft-rock on "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)" to an acoustic campfire vibe of "Get the Point," The Waterfall captures several different shades of My Morning Jacket's trademark moodiness. Wisely, the band doesn't overplay its hand — the eerie, haunted glow of "Spring (Among the Living)" packs an especially dramatic whallop precisely because it stands out from the rest of the songs.

Especially encouraging is the fact that The Waterfall is actually the first of two albums that My Morning Jacket have in store. (The untitled companion offering is rumored for release later this year.) Where so many bands are well into their decline by their seventh record, My Morning Jacket buck that trend with The Waterfall, the latest example that some artists are capable of getting stronger and more creatively focused as they age.

Free spirited psych rock that confirms My Morning Jacket to be the world's most credible jam band.

http://doublej.net.au/news/features/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall (http://doublej.net.au/news/features/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall)

The only thing Jim James said about My Morning Jacket's seventh album The Waterfall when it was announced was that it was heavily inspired by the natural beauty of Northern California, where they recorded it.

"Stinson Beach was so psychedelic and focused," he said. "It was almost like we lived on our own little moon out there. It feels like you're up in the sky."

At the time, it didn't feel like a particularly important piece of information. But, after hearing the album, there's a good chance you're going to want to visit that magical place. This album sounds so free that it's intoxicating. And it's very addictive.

Listening to the epic opening chorus of 'Believe (Nobody Knows)', you might expect The Waterfall to be packed with inspirational power ballads. But, if there's one thing we should know about this great American rock band by now, it's that they're unpredictable.

While My Morning Jacket have always been a band with a collectively open mind, there's a free-spirited feel to this LP that makes it feel more psychedelic than past efforts.

Often you can't predict where these songs are going to lead. Drawn out jams like 'In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)' change musical form throughout, never really settling on a style, while the songs range in style from pastoral folk ('Like A River') to brilliant, catchy classic rock ('Big Decisions').

While the band is generally unpredictable, there's rarely anything groundbreaking about their sound. Such is the case on The Waterfall. Cues from late-'60s hippie psych rock abound, with touches of '90s indie rock and '70s West Coast pop-rock.

Tthere are more traditionally impressive guitar histrionics littered throughout the album, however it's the messy guitar solo on 'Spring (Among The Living)' that shows why Jim James and Carl Broemel are considered to be among the new school of guitar gods. Within the perfectly layered instrumentation there's room – nay, need – for something more chaotic and they serve it up right on cue.

Given the rest of the album's relative madness, you kind of expect seven-minute closing track 'Only Memories Remain' to veer off into some kind of aurally psychedelic wonderland. But it doesn't. All throughout it remains as it started; gentle, smooth and classy. Even when they're playing it straight the band is hard to predict.

With The Waterfall, My Morning Jacket are creeping ever closer to being a legitimate jam band. But, in contrast to the hacky-sack loving Deadhead set, this band has well-deserved indie cred. The blissed-out psych rock of The Waterfall suggests they're entitled to keep it.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/music/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-ato-records.125141374 (http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/music/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-ato-records.125141374)

My Morning Jacket: The Waterfall (ATO Records)
Barry Didcock
Senior features writer
Wednesday 6 May 2015

THIS seventh studio album from the Kentucky five-piece was recorded mostly in an ocean-side studio in northern California and the setting has left its mark both in the constant allusions to water and nature, and in the musical spirits the songs often invoke - the melodic guitar rock of the Steve Miller Band, say, or the nostalgic, slightly mystical balladry of The Eagles.

There are lapses, particularly on the less experimental songs. The mostly acoustic Get The Point can't decide whether it wants to be Gentle On My Mind or the theme tune from Midnight Cowboy, and by the seventh minute of closing track Only Memories Remain, a soul-flavoured slow jam, you've more than got the point.

But it's when the band revs the throttle a little and sets off into the unknown that things become interesting. In Its Infancy (The Waterfall), the closest thing to a title track, blends grandiose themes with an operatic space-rock feel, while the almost-funky Compound Fracture is a smooth, seamless stomper in the mould of vintage Steely Dan. Holding it all together, and giving even the weaker songs some considerable heft, are the vocals and lyrics of singer-songwriter Jim James, which ooze both confidence and intellect.

Barry Didcock

The Waterfall
3.5/5 stars

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-20150505 (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-20150505)

By Will Hermes May 5, 2015

The Kentucky band's seventh album is its happiest ever, with shades of prog and soul

My Morning Jacket are contrarians: Southern rockers who have no truck with Nashville, jam-nation heroes who don't really jam, classic-rock acolytes with indie-rock sensibilities. It's made them a genre of one, and a band that can tap the past without sounding like throwbacks. The Waterfall is their latest case in point — a fusion of synth-wrapped Eighties pop, prog-rock and Philly soul that still connects like a heady MMJ record.

A breakup LP that lands somewhere near acceptance, The Waterfall might be the band's sunniest, and trippiest, album. Bent notes stretch the fabric of these songs like flashbacks. "Tropics (Erase Traces)" opens on an arpeggio recalling Yes' signature "Roundabout" — it's orchestral folk rock with a surprisingly logical psych-metal denouement. "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)" recalls the Band's "Chest Fever" alongside keytar-style squeals and digital ghost images; "Thin Line" conjures the Stylistics via Pink Floyd. Jim James' high tenor and easy, sublime falsetto remain the band's soul, in both senses. They're especially radiant on "Only Memories Remain," a meditative tune with a burbling guitar solo that feels like a Pacific sunset behind vapor-pen clouds, a perfect balance of the medicinal and the recreational.

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http://www.louisville.com/content/album-review-my-morning-jacket-waterfall (http://www.louisville.com/content/album-review-my-morning-jacket-waterfall)

Here we have it, finally after months of anticipation it has made it into our grubby little hands...My Morning Jacket's new album "The Waterfall."  Reportedly the first of two albums the band recorded last year in California.

It's a broad, sweeping, and often meandering album – that on the surface moves with less purpose than the band's previous albums; but then again that might very well be the purpose of this album.  As a collection of songs "The Waterfall" comes off like a band in search of something on a dark, star crusted beach.

It's atmospheric and textured but definitely feels somewhat less cohesive than the band's usual studio efforts.  They definitely capture an ethereal sprawl with spacey tracks like "Like a River" and "Only Memories Remain."  Jim James' voice is literally and figuratively throughout the album, there are certainly moments that feel like only slightly more subdued versions of his electronic, blip-heavy solo album 2013's "Regions of Light and Sound of God."

The album definitely gets a pulse toward the middle with more upbeat tracks "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)" and "Spring (Among the Living)."  It's on these tracks that the band seems to all be moving in the same direction for a change, and just on the verge of an overall, old school rock-out.

As instrumentalists, keyboardist Bo Koster and guitarist Carl Broemel prove that they can meander about with the best of them; but their rhythm section featuring drummer Pat Hallahan bassist Tom Blankenship continues to be the band's ace-in-the-hole.  Their complex interplay and restrained veracity lays the subtle foundation on which every one of these songs is built.  However, the cornerstone of the band's music is Jim James and the songs themselves, because once the frills and players are stripped away, these songs still stand on their own volition.

http://www.stereoboard.com/content/view/191344/9 (http://www.stereoboard.com/content/view/191344/9)

3/5 stars

My Morning Jacket have never been afraid of starting over. Their style has always been fluid and subject to subtle shifts, reflecting the circumstances of Jim James' writing process and his influences, which have not always been the most comfortable of bedfellows. 'The Waterfall' is another twist in the tale and a record that, from its first burbling keys onwards, is closely tied with its title.

That title, James recently told Rolling Stone, is a "metaphor for how life is constantly beating you down". But 'The Waterfall' takes that starting point and looks to the future. It's about slates washed clean, personal growth and grudges dropped. The water motif is helpful like that. "Roll the dice, set sail the ship and all the doors will open on down the line," runs Believe (Nobody Knows).

The arrangements are a further string to that particular bow. Here we find My Morning Jacket in an expansive, almost prog frame of mind. There are no sharp edges to be found, with the band instead opting for broad swathes of synth and picked guitars alongside the obligatory classic rock licks and alt-country harmonies.

From this mix emerges a record that, despite a couple of truly great songs, spends a little too much time in the middle of the road or pottering around the periphery.

It's impossible not to be swept along by the rolling AOR of Compound Fracture or the rugged, supremely melodic Big Decisions, while Like A River neatly encapsulates its name with brisk, dancing guitars.

But in In Its Infancy or Tropics we see the other side of the piece. Here My Morning Jacket are less focused and happier to indulge themselves, with the net result being some lusty psych-jams that struggle to hold interest. By no means are they disasters, but they quite simply don't pack the same punch as the record's finest moments.

James' thematic musings on life's curveballs and how to negotiate them - bolstered by knowledge of the idyllic recording setting in Stinson Beach and his subsequent back problems - serve as an anchor to prevent any lasting damage, leaving My Morning Jacket with another record to thrill, soothe and, at times, frustrate.

The Waterfall continues My Morning Jacket's reign as a Grateful Dead for the 21st century.

http://www.popmatters.com/review/192916-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/ (http://www.popmatters.com/review/192916-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/)

My Morning Jacket
The Waterfall
(ATO / Capitol)
US: 5 May 2015

Blessed be the band or film that forges a distinct culture amongst its fans. Phrases, dates, and places gain their own special significance and meaning amongst Beatlemaniacs, Potterheads, Trekkies, Achievers, and Little Monsters. William Shatner may have told a room full of Trekkies to "get a life", but at least the impassioned are enthusiastic about something, even if they are often characterized as obsessed, deviant, and hysterical.

My Morning Jacket's die-hard enthusiasts seem to be modern day Deadheads, with downloading swapped in the place of tape trading. In turn, these guys love their fans so much that they issued a self-hypnosis series through their fan club, Roll Call, "to help each individual fan reach a state of emotional bliss" with the assistance of an algorithm to sense listeners' temperature and emotional climate, carving pieces of music to "provide a vehicle for the listener to enter a new gateway of self-exploration and understanding based on their current state of mind at the time". In the past, the band has also let fans choose opening songs and encores as part of their "Spontaneous Curation" Series.

And so it is that My Morning Jacket seem firmly fixed in the public's mind not just as My Morning Straightjacket on American Dad, but also as a 21st century Grateful Dead. The music may not be all that similar to the Dead, and My Morning Jacket are a bigger commercial draw, but they do share a similar free-wheeling attitude and approach.

Although My Morning Jacket's new album The Waterfall was so keenly anticipated that its early leak made headline news, you never know what you're going to get with this band until you play the record. Every album sounds different, albeit there's usually some form of psychedelic freak-out lurking around the corner. The levitating "Believe (Nobody Knows)" opens the album and builds from a whirl and tinkle to screeching electric guitar, reminding us, generally speaking and also specifically to this band, that things can be unpredictable. In an optimistic fashion, James does not mention the only inevitabilities of death and taxes, but rather focuses on the positive.

The title of "Compound Fracture" sounds dismal, but it turns out to be close to Fleetwood Mac-esque pop. This is perhaps surprising given the image of My Morning Jacket, but the track goes to show that it's easy to be wrong-footed by preconceptions. Things turn more serious with a foray into nature through the mysticism of "Like a River", as James pushes his voice to the top of its register to soak the track in gorgeous, floaty falsetto. The tune develops a pulsating, rhythmic foundation which pulls it into the aptly titled "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)". This one also takes some time to build but is worth the patience required as again it subverts into smooth and catchy pop. James sings that he can stop the waterfall through a variety of methods which include thinking, breathing, feeling, and believing. It all may sound unlikely, but the song is transformative, with the sheen of late Rilo Kiley.

My Morning Jacket are not always the most accessible of groups, but there are some cuts easier to immediately appreciate than others. "Get the Point" is closest to some of James' contributions to the Basement Tapes project Lost on the River, and is brutally direct in admitting that the thrill of a romance has gone. After the death of this relationship, "Spring (Among the Living)" positively bristles with energy, opening with a primal howl of joy looking forward to the changes ahead. The band is tight, with the drumming and laser-like guitar truly shining. "Thin Line" is another highlight, like an awesome would-be theme to a '70s theme show on acid, with Pink Floyd guitar lines and soul vocals. At times, the music wigs out into difficult complexity, but this is what is in part needed to keep our attention these days.

The Waterfall naturally loses velocity to finish in a grand circular motion; the almost mainstream up-tempo rock of "Big Decision" marks the beginning of the end, followed by the cosmic noodle of "Tropics (Ease Traces)" and the laid-back soul groove of "Only Memories Remain". James describes the record as "the sound of the page turning", and as My Morning Jacket repeatedly prove here, all we can count on is change. New listeners may be disconcerted by the record's wide stylistic scope, but there are many worthy moments which can be latched on to if you stick with it, grabbing one of those hooks that seemingly appears out of nowhere. For the devotees, the deluxe version has five extra tracks, made up of three additional songs, a remix and a demo.

The Waterfall

Rating: 7/10 stars

As was true of 2011's "Circuital," My Morning Jacket's "The Waterfall" is largely a feel-good album, with Jim James acting as de facto spiritual guru.

http://www.heyreverb.com/blog/2015/05/05/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-review/103411/ (http://www.heyreverb.com/blog/2015/05/05/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-review/103411/)

Like English teachers, ministers and uncles, the best motivational speakers are reformed heathens. Relating is half the battle, so words of wisdom resonate clearer when they come from someone who's been to the other side and back.

On stage in a Grizzly Adams beard and Hispanic superhero cape, My Morning Jacket lead singer Jim James has preached to the band's faithful for nigh on two decades now. When he warns about how a life spent in bars slips away chillingly fast, or the importance of growing past your youthful indulgences, you can't help but believe it's from a place of knowing. The band even puts on a retreat of sorts, an all-inclusive mini-festival in Mexico called One Big Holiday, where fans can, in the band's words, get it out of their system.

So it's not unexpected that so much of the energy of the band's latest effort, "The Waterfall," is dedicated to sweeping inspirational flourishes. As was true of 2011's "Circuital," it's largely a feel-good album, with James acting as de facto spiritual guru. "Time to roll, the answer floats on down the farthest shore / Of the mind," he hums at album's open as if perched on our collective shoulder on "Believe (Nobody Knows)." As is typical for a My Morning Jacket album, it takes no time for the song to hit a roof-cracking arena rock swell to match the uplifting sentiment.

The crux of the lesson plan here is the power of the mind, as is outlined on the prog-rocking eponymous track, "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)." The waterfall in question is the torrent of obligations and fears that batter us in our lives, which James proclaims can be stopped "by just believing." The constant proselytizing can get grating fast, as if the album could be subtitled "My Morning Jacket's Take Back Your Life In Ten Easy Songs!" But as to put the onus back on the listener, James reminds us on "Big Decisions" how ridiculous it is to make a CD your life coach: "What do you want me to do? / Make all the big decisions for you?" Mixed messages abound.

Casting aside the motivational concept album of "The Waterfall," My Morning Jacket are typically bankable when it comes to breaking off massive alt-rock riffs. They've been toting "Compound Fracture" to their promotional performances, and it shines in its own Miami Vice radio way. But save for it and and "Believe," the highlights here are found in down-tempo respites. "Get The Point" deals largely in cliches, but they're strung together gorgeously by a welcome appearance from James' acoustic picking prowess. "Only Memories Remain" gives the band a slow soul-burner to shuffle into their setlists, sounding as they are wont to do like a wedding band losing sight of the evening for the tabs that the groomsman slipped in their drinks.

These sprawling offerings are what make My Morning Jacket such a treasured outfit in the overlapping world of arena rock and jam band they inhabit. "The Waterfall" doesn't have as many of these moments as the band's last effort, instead favoring a generic 80's rock sound that can go south pretty damn quick, especially when paired with James' penchant for garden variety revelations ("Spring (Among The Living)" in particular). But at this point in the band's career, it's well known that a My Morning Jacket album is as capable of campy new age rock as it is riveting prog ballads. On "The Waterfall," they're usually one in the same.

Review: My Morning Jacket offers great ride on 'The Waterfall' (Grade: A)

BY LUCAS PAULEY lpauley@saukvalley.com 800-798-4085, ext. 5576 @LucasJayPauley

http://www.saukvalley.com/2015/05/05/review-my-morning-jacket-offers-great-ride-on-the-waterfall-grade-a/ahh7kvf/ (http://www.saukvalley.com/2015/05/05/review-my-morning-jacket-offers-great-ride-on-the-waterfall-grade-a/ahh7kvf/)

My Morning Jacket, one of the more consistent American rock bands of the past 15 years, has done it again.

The band's latest album, "The Waterfall," is great. One of the best of the year so far, actually.

Never afraid to dabble in different genres – with feet tapping back and forth between psychedelic rock and southern-rock-infused country – the band has always been enjoyable, but sometimes hard to fully embrace.

On "The Waterfall," MMJ finds a way to venture to different heights without losing sight of where they launched.

The album opens with the extremely catchy "Believe (Nobody Knows)," perfectly suited for huge stages, like the one the band will play on June 13 at Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee.

Singer-songwriter Jim James delivers some of his best hooks yet in "Big Decisions," and "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)."

The frontman's voice can range from a gruff, nasally lower tone, to an impressive, and sometimes bone-chilling, falsetto.

The instrumentation on the album keeps things interesting. From the acoustic tones of "Get The Point" and "Like A River," to the classic rock-inspired electric guitars on "Compound Fracture" and "Thin Line," the band's musicianship is constantly grabbing your attention.

The band closes with its two best tracks, "Tropics (Erase Traces)," and the 7-minute finale "Only Memories Remain."

Seven minutes? Yeah, but trust me.

With MMJ – and many genre-hopping bands with loose song structures – it's all about the melodies. A great melody can hold it all together.

The band makes a living on "wait for it ... wait for it .... BAM." And, few times have they done it better than on "The Waterfall."

MY MORNING JACKET UNLEASHES THE WATERFALL
by John Buhler / The Garbage Time
four out of five stars
http://www.thegarbagetime.com/morning-jacket-unleashes-waterfall/ (http://www.thegarbagetime.com/morning-jacket-unleashes-waterfall/)

It's my great pleasure to introduce the first of hopefully many great album reviews here at The Garbage Time.  One of my favorite bands My Morning Jacket released their seventh studio album, The Waterfall, Tuesday morning.  The alternative-country quintet from Louisville, Kentucky has bounced back from two mildly satisfactory albums to produce something truly great.  While The Waterfall doesn't eclipse 2005's Z, (nothing ever will, as it's one of the best albums ever recorded) My Morning Jacket does their best to recapture that magic on album number seven.

1. Believe (Nobody Knows)

Over the year's My Morning Jacket has always been able to deliver a great opening track on each of their studio albums.  The use of tape manipulation and musique concrète caught me by complete surprise immediately out of the gate on Believe (Nobody Knows).  Keyboardist Bo Koster's early statement as a major contributor in the album's overall sound begins with an uplifting, hypnotic piano riff.  The chorus explodes with loud guitar chords from lead singer/rhythm guitarist Jim James.  Lead guitarist Carl Broemel plays more notes on this track alone than he did on the entire record Circuital, which is outstanding as MMJ are at their best when James and Broemel play off each other as guitarists.  If you listen closely, you can hear the rhythm section of bassist 'Two-Tone' Tommy Blankenship and the most underrated drummer in rock n' roll Patrick Hallahan continue to work their magic.  I can't wait to hear this song live.  Musically it's incredible.  My only concern is if James can attack the vocals with the same ferocity as he does with 'Gideon' when this song goes live.

2. Compound Fracture

I look at Compound Fracture as MMJ taking a Mulligan on Evil Urges' 'Highly Suspicious' and doing a better job of emulating Prince and the Revolution.  "Compound fracture, gotta set the bone" is a better lyric than "Peanut butter pudding surprise".  There's definitely a Led Zeppelin influence in this song as it reminds me of 'All My Love'.  Lyrically this song draws influence from Jim James' injury falling off the stage last tour.  Just when the song starts to get too repetitive, Hallahan changes the beat marvelously.  I can see the band extending the song live as Koster gets funky with the Hammond Organ like he's the late Ray Manzarek of The Doors.  There's a really cool Miami Jungle Version of Compound Fracture in the bonus tracks.  I imagine this is more of what the song will sound like live.  Seriously, My Morning Jacket needs to make Okonokos Part Deux on tour for this album.

3. Like a River

Usually I'm not the biggest fan of when Jim James decides to go folky on an MMJ record, because that means very little Patrick Hallahan on that particular song.  'Like a River' has this frenetic picking pattern that I thoroughly enjoy as the song gradually builds.  After a few listens, it almost of like an It Still Moves' 'Golden' and Circuital's 'Holdin' On To Black Metal' sonic fusion if that makes any sense.  What really stands out to me on the third track of The Waterfall is how engulfing it is in the last-minute and a half, swallowing me whole in a wall of sound.  It's continuing to grow on me.  Though it's not my favorite type of My Morning Jacket song, I believe many fans will enjoy this track.

4. In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)

The title track is also the best track on the record.  It sounds like a more complex song than The Who could ever play for Pete Townshend. I didn't think it was possible that we would hear the Wurlizter again from the Louisville quintet as it has become synonymous with the octaves of Circuital's 'Victory Dance'.  Koster does more than octaves on this Wurly riff.  Halfway through the song, it's like Black Sabbath took over.  Is Tony Iommi making a guest appearance on this track?  The syncopated power chords of James and the driving drumming of Hallahan give Broemel space to explore the middle of the fret board.  Prove me wrong, but I think In Its Infancy will prove problematic in live shows as it's a bit all over the place.  Not really in a bad way, but kind of how it was hard for your high school band to recreate Led Zeppelin's 'Black Dog' from your Mom's basement.

5. Get the Point

I love this song.  It has all the best features of an MMJ ballad.  From Hallahan's persistent brushstrokes on the snare to Broemel's excellent use of the steel guitar to James' angelic voice.  Great lyrics for a beautiful song about a relationship losing its excitement.  It's not quite 'Golden', but for a ballad in the middle of the record it certainly keeps you interested.  On vinyl the is the last track on side two and it does a great job transitioning to the latter half of The Waterfall.

6. Spring (Among the Living)

If you like 'Victory Dance' or 'Wordless Chorus', Spring (Among the Living) is right up your alley.  Lyrically this song is all about rebirth and getting back to feeling alive again.  Each time I listen to it, I pick up on something new that I hadn't heard before.  I'm on listen twenty-four.  There are three distinct parts to this track that stand out to me:  Patrick Hallahan's versatility on the skins, Broemel's Dondante-like guitar soloing, and the Rubber Soul vibe I got each time I listened to this track.  Spring, like the season itself, is bursting with controlled chaos.  I cannot wait to see the boys recreate this one live!

7. Thin Line

This one is straight out of the sixties.  It's like the Kentucky boys were listening to a lot of Pet Sounds before recording this tune.  The guitar solo cuts through the song kind of like how Brian May of Queen used to do on a Freddie Mercury piano ballad.  It's a challenge for me to hear what James is singing as the music is so mesmerizing.  All I'm getting is that 'It's a thin line between lovin' and wasting our time".  That's good enough for me.  This might be a deeper cut on the album but it's still very much enjoyable to listen to.

8. Big Decisions

Big Decisions is the lead single off The Waterfall.  It's a good choice by the band as it illustrates the entire group's talents in a pop-sensible way.  It commands your attention in the way that Z's 'What A Wonderful Man' does.  I haven't heard this amount of strings on an MMJ song since 'Gideon', but that's a good thing.  The call and response efforts by Broemel and Koster give this song great sonic depth.  The Fleet Foxes sounding song probably kicks some serious tail live, too.  My only issue is that the bridge drags on too long.  Then again, it's a bridge and that's what they tend to do.  Big Decisions was a good choice for a lead single.

9. Tropics (Erase Traces)

Tropics (Erase Traces) continues the lovely trend of intricate guitar melodies found on The Waterfall.  Lyrically, it's all about getting away from yourself on an out-of-body experience in a far away land.  Hallahan's fills and driving beat gives this song structure that's craving the great escape.  Seriously, just about every song on The Waterfall can find its way into a live set.  The muffled electric guitar glissando increases in frequency until it happens at every bar during another snarly solo.  Tropics might be this record's version of 'Off The Record'.  It's just that good and it scares me a bit.

10. Only Memories Remain

The final track on The Waterfall is also the longest at over seven minutes in length.  This holds true with every MMJ record.  This could easily be a Fleetwood Mac hit.  Vocally James reminds me of Christine McVie.  It's like the bizarro version of Dondante, with much brighter chords and lyrical content.  The guitar work on this record is impressive from start to finish.  While Only Memories Remain can't eclipse Z's Dondante as my favorite last track by My Morning Jacket, I'm all for letting it grow on me.

Overall, this is a great record from the Louisville, Kentucky quintet.  Lyrically I think it's MMJ's deepest record to date.  Much of that has to do with drawing inspiration from Jim James' fall from stage on the Circuital Tour.  The band continued to embrace the reverb and ambient recording tactics of Circuital but with much better songs.  If there's filler on this record, there might be just a song or two.

All members of the band shined on this record.  Hallahan continues to impress behind the drum kit.  Blankenship is as smooth as ever with his bass lines.  Expect them to pop more in live shows.  They always do.  Koster comes to the forefront on a few songs with his exploration of the keyboard.  Broemel gets back to doing what he does best, playing great lead guitar and shimmering with that country-sounding steel guitar of his.  Perhaps most importantly, Jim James should feel immense pride with this record.  It's not Z but I believe that it has the staying power of 2003's It Still Moves.  From MMJ, that's a good as you can hope for.  I'll give their seventh album, The Waterfall, four out of five stars.

"The Waterfall" (Deluxe) – My Morning Jacket [Official Full Album Stream + Zumic Review]

http://zumic.com/music-videos/174793/the-waterfall-deluxe-my-morning-jacket-official-full-album-stream-zumic-review/ (http://zumic.com/music-videos/174793/the-waterfall-deluxe-my-morning-jacket-official-full-album-stream-zumic-review/)

ZUMIC RATING: 4.5/5 stars

My Morning Jacket are one of the bands that have essentially led the American rock scene into the 21st century. Balancing an organic sound rooted in tradition with a consistent effort to be creative, the group from Louisville has earned their reputation as one of the best live bands on the planet. On their 2015 album, The Waterfall, they continue to churn out a heady brew of sonic gravy and epic poetry.

Every My Morning Jacket album seems to go hand-in-hand with a concept, even if that concept is just capturing the band at a particular stage of growth in their creative development and experimentation. Having said that, The Waterfall is the closest thing to a true concept album that the band has ever made.

At the front and center of the My Morning Jacket maelstrom is Jim James. The band's dynamic lead singer and guitarist has a few special qualities as a musician, a songwriter, and a producer. He and the band have a unique sound, reflecting modern indie rock while staying true to the soulful twang of classic rock and country.

Behind James, the band of Patrick Hallahan (drums), 'Two-Tone Tommy' Blankenship (bass), Carl Broemel (guitars, pedal steel, sax, vocals), and Bo Koster (keys) are a sturdy and versatile group that can pivot on a dime from hard rock to folk ballads to slow electro-grooves to reggae.

The Waterfall is symbolic of so many things. Looking at the album cover, you get a sense of the natural beauty. You get a sense of the power, but also peace and serenity. There's constant movement and progression. These things certainly apply to the album, but behind the surface there's a deeper and more personal meaning to the concept.

Jim James told Rolling Stone's Patrick Doyle, The Waterfall "is a metaphor for how life is constantly beating you down, and you really have to take time to stop it and get through." Throughout the album, the lyricism details a dark cycle of living through indecision and failed relationships.

James admitted to Rolling Stone that this was based on his real life experience. It's important to note that James had health issues during the creative process, requiring surgery for a herniated disc in his back. While going through the healing process, he co-produced the album with the highly esteemed Tucker Martine.

In a Rolling Stone article by Jason Newman, James broke down his writing style: "I like to joke if aliens came down and found my lyrics and had to come up with one overarching theme of what I was going for, they'd be like, 'This dude is really fuckin' confused.' Confusion is still my primary theme."

Without reading and dissecting the lyrics and interviews, you probably wouldn't realize that the album told such a sad story. That is because it sounds so damn good!

"Believe (Nobody Knows)" is an upbeat and exciting opening, setting up the dark philosophical journey. The band achieves liftoff during "Compound Fracture," combining bombastic prog-rock with disco-era R&B in an interesting way. Early in the song, it feels like the band might have gone off the rails on their way to cheesy territory, but they come together and the result is actually somewhat spellbinding.

"In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)" is a classic MMJ jam. You can hear shades of MMJ's 2003 hit "One Big Holiday" in the hi-hat intro before an electro-church keyboard breakdown takes the album to a higher level. Layers of grooves dance around each other, as crushing guitar and funky spaceship keys push the creative envelope. My Morning Jacket prove they can still make awesomely weird rock records with a strong hook.

"Big Decisions" is another MMJ instant classic. This is the kind of song that should be a radio hit, with its steady groove and pleasant vocals. The pedal steel guitar is really nice, falling somewhere between Nashville Opry and Hawaiian slack-key.

"Spring (Among The Living)" is a soaring epic rocker. If you're familiar with the MMJ bear motif, you'll get a chuckle out of the fact they wrote a song explicitly about coming out of hibernation.

"Like A River" and "Get The Point" show James' brand of folk-rock-meets-chamber-pop, evoking an easy comparison to Paul McCartney's work on Magical Mystery Tour and as a solo artist.

The bonus tracks on the deluxe version of the album include two songs that didn't make the LP ("Hillside Song" and "I Can't Wait") and two alternate recordings of songs that did make the LP ("Compound Fracture" and "Only Memories Remain"). The songs that didn't make it are solid tunes, but you can see why they were cut. The alternate versions show some insight to the band's songwriting and recording process, and "Compound Fracture" (Miami Jungle Version) is a particularly good listen.

Compared to My Morning Jacket's previous album, Circuital, released in 2011, The Waterfall may be a bit of a letdown. James' writing was at an emotional high point on Circuital, turning out joyous songs like "Victory Dance" and "Wonderful (The Way I Feel)."

Even when he sings about devastation and depression, Jim James' voice and guitar shines as he fights against the flow to achieve the rarified air of glorious sound. This is the type of LP that audiophiles and vinyl record collectors will definitely want to check out because of the great sound quality. There are a few weak moments that feel a little uninspired, and the lyrics openly discuss that struggle. Even so, this is an excellent album. There's no denying that My Morning Jacket are a force to be reckoned with, making life-affirming music through good times and bad.

Album review: My Morning Jacket
Singer focuses inward on enchanting new album

http://www.bendbulletin.com/entertainment/music/3130857-151/album-review-my-morning-jacket# (http://www.bendbulletin.com/entertainment/music/3130857-151/album-review-my-morning-jacket#)

Published May 8, 2015 at 12:06AM
My Morning Jacket
"THE WATERFALL"
ATO Records/Capital Records

The hum of an everyday mysticism has always been part of the deal for My Morning Jacket, but it resonates louder than usual on "The Waterfall." Don't mistake it for a problem. All those lyrics about openness, about flow, about mind-body dualism — they suit this band perfectly, along with cavernous reverb and heavy-foot midrange tempos.

That much becomes clear on the album's curtain-raiser, "Believe (Nobody Knows)," whose title effectively spoils the plot. "Believe," Jim James urges four times in the chorus, ascending halfway up a major scale. Then, with feeling, "Nobody knows!" Is that an admission? A reassurance? It doesn't matter; James is saying, as succinctly as he can, that the absence of proof lays the bedrock for belief.

"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. Like the band's 2011 album, "Circuital," which was a self-conscious return to form after some clanky experiments, this one was produced by James with engineer Tucker Martine.

The band long ago set the hazy but four-square dimensions of its style. Some of these tracks, like "Compound Fracture," evoke 1970s commercial rock, complete with blended "oohs." (Among the backup singers are Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes and Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards.) Other tracks, like "Spring (Among the Living)," which gravely hails the changing of the seasons, feel designed for maximum liftoff on big stages.

ON TOUR: Sept. 30 — Keller Auditorium, Portland; www.mymorningjacket.com (http://www.mymorningjacket.com).

— Nate Chinen,
New York Times

 My Morning Jacket sounds oddly bored with new album
Waterloo Region Record
By Michael Barclay

http://www.therecord.com/whatson-story/5607400-my-morning-jacket-sounds-oddly-bored-with-new-album/ (http://www.therecord.com/whatson-story/5607400-my-morning-jacket-sounds-oddly-bored-with-new-album/)

My Morning Jacket
"The Waterfall" (Universal)

Undeniably one of the greatest American rock bands of the last 15 years, My Morning Jacket delights in confounding. There have been plenty of head-scratching moments for fans, and thankfully for all of us they're usually contained to every second album. Following the every-second-album rule, MMJ have a phenomenal discography: "At Dawn," "Z," "Circuital." Beyond that, you'd only ever need the 2006 live document "Okonokos" and maybe a few other stray tracks. (And Jim James's stunning 2013 solo album.)

But now that we've heard all of MMJ's greatest tricks — the soaring majesty of James's voice, the epic guitar jams, the detours into new wave, reggae, and odes to black metal, all wrapped up in the haunting, reverb-drenched psychedelic folk-rock that started it all off in the first place — what can MMJ do in 2015 to impress us? Maybe they can start by impressing themselves.

For such a creative, curious band, MMJ sound oddly bored here. With precious few exceptions, there's an audible lethargy here, even on the ostensibly uptempo tracks. From the vocal harmonies to the guitar grooves to the stadium-rock drums, so much of "The Waterfall" sounds like '70s rock clichés that this band successfully avoided, or subverted, in the past. The only songs here I ever want to hear again are the ones that are the most stripped down, the ones that might as well by Jim James solo tracks, the ones where the power and glory of his band aren't even in play.

That doesn't bode well — but apparently the followup album is already finished and scheduled to come out in the next 12 months. Judging by history, they'll bounce right back. Let's hope so.

Download: "Get the Point," "Compound Fracture," "Only Memories Remain"

Quote from: johnnYYac on May 08, 2015, 01:13 PM
My Morning Jacket sounds oddly bored with new album
Waterloo Region Record
By Michael Barclay

http://www.therecord.com/whatson-story/5607400-my-morning-jacket-sounds-oddly-bored-with-new-album/ (http://www.therecord.com/whatson-story/5607400-my-morning-jacket-sounds-oddly-bored-with-new-album/)

Wow, this is infruriating in so many ways.

Quote from: johnnYYac on May 08, 2015, 01:13 PM
My Morning Jacket sounds oddly bored with new album
Waterloo Region Record
By Michael Barclay

http://www.therecord.com/whatson-story/5607400-my-morning-jacket-sounds-oddly-bored-with-new-album/ (http://www.therecord.com/whatson-story/5607400-my-morning-jacket-sounds-oddly-bored-with-new-album/)

My Morning Jacket
"The Waterfall" (Universal)

Undeniably one of the greatest American rock bands of the last 15 years, My Morning Jacket delights in confounding. There have been plenty of head-scratching moments for fans, and thankfully for all of us they're usually contained to every second album. Following the every-second-album rule, MMJ have a phenomenal discography: "At Dawn," "Z," "Circuital." Beyond that, you'd only ever need the 2006 live document "Okonokos" and maybe a few other stray tracks. (And Jim James's stunning 2013 solo album.)

But now that we've heard all of MMJ's greatest tricks — the soaring majesty of James's voice, the epic guitar jams, the detours into new wave, reggae, and odes to black metal, all wrapped up in the haunting, reverb-drenched psychedelic folk-rock that started it all off in the first place — what can MMJ do in 2015 to impress us? Maybe they can start by impressing themselves.

For such a creative, curious band, MMJ sound oddly bored here. With precious few exceptions, there's an audible lethargy here, even on the ostensibly uptempo tracks. From the vocal harmonies to the guitar grooves to the stadium-rock drums, so much of "The Waterfall" sounds like '70s rock clichés that this band successfully avoided, or subverted, in the past. The only songs here I ever want to hear again are the ones that are the most stripped down, the ones that might as well by Jim James solo tracks, the ones where the power and glory of his band aren't even in play.

That doesn't bode well — but apparently the followup album is already finished and scheduled to come out in the next 12 months. Judging by history, they'll bounce right back. Let's hope so.

Download: "Get the Point," "Compound Fracture," "Only Memories Remain"

Does this ass clown even Jacket? At Dawn, Z Circuital the only good albums... Does he even know ISM?

I knew that would stir up some discussion...  :rolleyes:

Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but good lord this is crazy speak. I've seriously never heard anyone that likes MMJ, dismiss ISM. No one.

Quote from: Angelo on May 08, 2015, 08:39 PM
Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but good lord this is crazy speak. I've seriously never heard anyone that likes MMJ, dismiss ISM. No one.

Yeah, it's hard to give any credence to anything he says after that.   :rolleyes:

Dismisses ISM but calls Regions "Stunning," lol...

I shall now dismiss this reviewer forever.

twelvetonereviews:
MY MORNING JACKET – A WATERFALL OF VIBES
8.5/10
https://twelvetonereviews.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/my-morning-jacket-a-waterfall-of-vibes-2/

The title of My Morning Jacket's latest LP, 'The Waterfall' stands as a metaphor for life beating down upon you. Or at least that's what frontman Jim James told Rolling Stone magazine, in a recent interview about the band's seventh album. Upon examination, this certainly stands true, but several even more obvious relations between title and content emerge.

From start to finish, the entire album feels closely connected with water ; every note of guitar flows and merges with the other in fluid-like perfection as Jones' enigmatic vocals wind their way from track to track. The resulting ensemble of sound results in a record that is at once uplifting, cuttingly insightful, and above all, impactful.

Never one to be constrained by genre, the endlessly appealing label-less nature of MMJ returns with a force. Influences ranging from John Martyn to Paul Simon are immediately apparent, all with an original veneer of My Morning Jacket's own style which galvanises every tone to create a record that is increasingly remarkable with every listen. Crucial to the ever unfolding drama present on this LP is a deeply ingrained spirituality which lies beneath the band's substantial musical talent. Jim James' vocal utilisation, ranging from emotional droning to emphatic groans, ties in peerlessly with throngs of wounded lyrics, punctuated by an array of dischordal introspective melodies.

'The Waterfall' is a river in itself ; aesthetically beautiful, with a  sense of power that is perhaps not immediately apparent. Above  all, this album demonstrates that even after two decades, My Morning Jacket's river of creativity has still not reached it's zenith.

Van Hunt Talks My Morning Jacket's The Waterfall

Grammy-winning songwriter Van Hunt says My Morning Jacket has made a soft couch for aching bones.

http://thetalkhouse.com/music/talks/van-hunt-talks-my-morning-jackets-the-waterfall/ (http://thetalkhouse.com/music/talks/van-hunt-talks-my-morning-jackets-the-waterfall/)

I spend hours online looking for inspiration — listening to music, new and old, trying to connect with the feeling that originally fueled my drive to create. One day, I found My Morning Jacket.

I want to close my eyes and concentrate on their new album The Waterfall but happiness threatens when I do. The first three drops — "Believe (Nobody Knows)," "Compound Fracture" and "Like a River" — make the kind of noise that I'm afraid to believe in. I fend off déjà vu as the drumskins and electric axes keep kicking the AM radio of my past into my present. But finally, at the first fortissimo, I say "fuck it" — and in an unobservable moment, I do. I actually do believe that My Morning Jacket is the panacea.

This record is irresistible. A soft couch for aching bones.

OK, now I wanna smoke. The fourth song, "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)," is darker than the beginning of the sequence and I welcome the guitar solo that arrives three-quarters of the way in. Thank you. Then "Get the Point" lopes into view and... oh man, I hope she gets the point, too. Oooh, that pedal steel should help drive it home! This is obviously a great song that shouldn't lose any "cool" because of that fact.

The first time I listened to The Waterfall, iTunes reshuffled the album's sequence. Big Brother is now making the decisions about what order I will listen to this album in. As I swivel and reach to turn off shuffle, "Big Decisions" cuts the line. The irony is too good to disrupt, so I recline. The song asks an important question: "What do you want me to do? Make all the big decisions for you?" And, of course, lovers will answer "yes" but in truth, my love only wants decisions made for it when it's weary and tired of being afraid of what could be next.

"Only Memories Remain" is my kind of dynamite. A sweet, sticky thang that gets caught up on itself. It's hot sugar: a chunk of high, punchy rhythm guitar jumping on a solid, concrete beat. I really enjoy MMJ's guitar solos, but they should have kept the groove going while this particulaIt's hot sugar: a chunk of high, punchy rhythm guitar jumping on a solid, concrete beat. r solo played. A bending note that goes as far as this one does to put its neck on the line for a sound deserves a safety net. But ahhh, the vamp... this is that Neil Young shit. In fact, I might "shoot my baby down by the river" after this track fades. Whoa, the drummer just went to the rimshot, and the band gathers itself for the finale.

Tennessee and Kentucky lie together on the map. It's fun to imagine the Louisville-sown MMJ purposely taking full advantage of their proximity to the former yards of Memphis pillars like William "Bell" Yarborough, Willie Mitchell and Isaac Hayes. But dig a little deeper into their roots and you can pull Appalachian bluegrass out of an African gourd — the kind of country music that swept all around the world via Carl Perkins, Chet Atkins, Buffalo Springfield and even Deep Purple.

MMJ isn't afraid to reach for more in the middle of a perfect drone. They can get jangly and punch holes through a bag. "Spring (Among the Living)" slaps you with a Tower of Power/Fela Kuti groove, which can be gratifyingly strange when filtered through the Bluegrass State.

I can tell "Thin Line" is going to do me in. This joint sounds like the Persuaders rehearsing next door to the Flaming Lips after distortion vaporized the dividing wall. The trill of the strings adds a shimmering escort for the song's exit. "Tropics (Erase Traces)" is the last song (on Big Brother's shuffled sequence, anyway). It makes me wish I was experiencing it on an evening with 30,000 other Woodstock fugitives. Frame by frame, toke by toke, and indeed, we would erase the traces.

I used to have a writing partner, given to hopeful creativity. I trusted him to stretch out the anxious-less environment of his sound, forever and ever. He had a Jim James-esque quality to his playing that held little in the way of self-consciousness. Almost without ego, but pushy in ways, too. He was sort of a gracious host who ignored my self-indulgence by firmly insisting I relax and have a good time. My Morning Jacket, maybe even more so than my former writing partner, could fulfill the promise of undying heavens.

My Morning Jacket's "The Waterfall": You've never heard Jim James like this

The frontman switches up his approach on what may be My Morning Jacket's darkest — and best — album yet

Stephen Deusner

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/08/my_morning_jackets_the_waterfall_youve_never_heard_jim_james_like_this/ (http://www.salon.com/2015/05/08/my_morning_jackets_the_waterfall_youve_never_heard_jim_james_like_this/)

If 2015 has already been a good year for music, it's been an especially good year for that time-honored rock-and-roll totem, the break-up album. Back in January Los Angeles folk singer Jessica Pratt conveyed heartache via tape manipulations and Duran Duran quotes on her latest album, "On Your Own Love Again," which stands as one of the most obsessively listenable records of the year. Then came Björk's "Vulnicura," a contorted monument to her split with artist Matthew Barney that earned comparisons to Joan Didion's grief memoir "The Year of Magical Thinking."

By these standards, My Morning Jacket's "The Waterfall" depicts a not-quite-sympathetic male protagonist similar to an Updike antihero—caddish, self-absorbed, impatient with the women in his life. Especially for a band that straddles the bro and the indie-rock audiences, the frankness of these new songs can be unsettling, at times even off-putting. On the other hand, "The Waterfall" may be the Louisville band's best, most ambitious, and most nuanced effort in more than a decade, a musically inventive and lyrically nuanced collection that isn't quite a concept album, but plays like one. It might be better described as a story album, as frontman Jim James recounts a particularly bad split and comes out the other end with new perspective.

"Get the Point" starts as a gentle folk tune, with a coffeeshop guitar strum, a rainy-day melody, and James wishing an ex "all the love in this world and beyond." It's a sweet sentiment, yet he follows it up with sarcasm: "I hope you get the point... the thrill is gone." It's the first hint that James will bust out of his established gentle-beardo persona and play the villain in these songs. First single "Big Decisions" is perhaps the standout, with its big, crunchy hook and its almost combative tone. "I'm getting so tired of trying to always be nice," James declares, so he stops trying.

When "Big Decisions" was released as the album's first single back in March, it had an air of bravado, as though it was about wriggling free of a destructive situation. And James told Rolling Stone recently that the song was inspired by a group of friends who were more interested in bitching than in improving their circumstances. Yet, there are so few concrete details in the lyrics that the song takes on a new meaning in the context of "The Waterfall," where the surrounding songs suggest a darker, more combative tone. In particular, the chorus sounds like a putdown, insulting and even infantilizing its dismissiveness: "What do you want me to do? Make all the big decisions for you." It's an ugly scene, and "The Waterfall" begins to sound like the least generous break-up album in recent memory.

And yet.

"The Waterfall" wouldn't be as compelling if it didn't sound so good. That actually goes a long way, especially during a week when Mumford & Sons are redefining their aesthetic from bland acoustic uplift to even blander electric uplift. Ever since My Morning Jacket dropped its debut "The Tennessee Fire" in 1999, they've consistently been one of the weirdest rock bands of the new millennium, refining oddball heartland rock into epic stage shows that have made them festival favorites. James' massively reverbed vocals inspired a glut of similar acts during the 2000s (Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes), but the band's slinky slow jams and rustic psychedelic rave-ups have proved less influential and more idiosyncratic.

By some standards—i.e., the exquisitely lo-fi "Tennesse Fire" and its follow-up, "At Dawn"—"The Waterfall" may sound clean and polished, but that only makes it easier for us to hear what's going on in these songs. And there's a lot going on: prog and jamband rock collide with r&b, country, and folk, sounding immense without sacrificing nuance. Guitars still provide the crunchy riffs and the skybound solos, but they're rarely the dominant instruments. Instead, My Morning Jacket gives just as much weight to cinematic strings, rigid drum machines, jittery synths, and the occasional choir singing wordless choruses. It sounds familiar and new at the same time.

"The Waterfall" is a well-shaped album, sequenced with great care to emphasize a certain self-awareness. Had these songs been arranged in any other order, they might have sounded dour and defeatist, yet the tracklist eases you into the dark drama of the album, starting with the opener. "Believe (Nobody Knows)" is likely the sunniest and cheesiest song they've ever recorded, the latest in a long line of out-of-leftfield openers. It's a slice of major-key promcore rock that could have played over the closing credits of "American Anthem" or any other '80s teen sports flick—outré by design but not necessarily retro, bombastic but wholly unironic. It's exactly the kind of song that demands a sea of lighters (or whatever people hold up these days during climactic concert moments) and a crowd singing along with every word.

Nothing else on "The Waterfall" sounds even remotely like "Believe," of course. Nothing else sounds quite so generous or hopeful, either. The song sitting at the top of the tracklist distracts you from the fact that "The Waterfall" is a very dark album for this band; it puts the happy ending right at the beginning, if only to make the downers that follow sound a bit less prickly, a bit less tense. It takes a while for those darker themes to emerge, as the first half of the album shuffles through various metaphors for life and relationships: love is "like a river windin' its way," a romantic split hurts like a compound fracture. A little Hallmark here, a little horror show there.

Granted, it's all too easy to conflate rock singers with their rock songs—to hear lyrics as a direct and unfiltered reflection of whoever is delivering them. However direct and confessional this record may sound, it's helpful for us to think of James as an actor playing a role or inhabiting a character. That shouldn't lessen the impact of the music or diminish its candor — it's just how songwriting works, creating a useful distance between the artist and his subject matter. In other words, we can hear James sing a lyric like, "It's a thin line between lovin' and wasting my time," and still distinguish between a songwriter purposefully misquoting Al Green and an unreliable narrator presenting only one side of the story.

Listening to this or almost any other breakup album is like eavesdropping on someone arguing over the phone. You can only hear one side of the conversation. The obvious exception is Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours," which features band members writing some pretty harsh songs about each other. But very rarely does the other person have an opportunity to tell his or more often her version of events. All we hear is the singer's story, so we naturally tend to commiserate with him. Bjork's "Vulnicura" offers a useful counterpoint here. Musically the album is monochromatic, with each song set to a similarly austere string arrangement and a few nonintrusive beats. Emotionally, however, it is intense, as Bjork conveys a wounded desperation that sounds all too real. First she struggles to convince herself that things can get better ("Maybe he'll come out of this loving me"), then she tries to figure out how to live a life beyond this relationship ("When I'm broken, I am whole").

Bjork inhabits her role a bit more easily than James plays his, although that may be due to how forthcoming she has been about the real events that inspired these songs. She is definitely the more sympathetic figure, albeit not quite as interesting: Pop music is littered with broken hearts, but there are relatively few conflicted heartbreakers. Although he's been — to his credit — tight-lipped about the specific inspirations behind these songs, there's something intriguing and useful about the way he shirks our sympathies, expanding the rift between him and the "I" in his songs. "The Waterfall" puts you right in the middle of the kinds of uncomfortable arguments that everyone has, as though James was working through these issues in real time.

Perhaps it's even brave for a songwriter to put himself out there right before the summer, when long tours and various festival dates will have him singing these songs, reliving these arguments, and inhabiting these roles night after night after night. He won't be wasting his time, though. Or ours.

Quote from: CC Baxter on May 07, 2015, 10:09 AM
MY MORNING JACKET UNLEASHES THE WATERFALL
by John Buhler / The Garbage Time
four out of five stars
http://www.thegarbagetime.com/morning-jacket-unleashes-waterfall/ (http://www.thegarbagetime.com/morning-jacket-unleashes-waterfall/)

It's my great pleasure to introduce the first of hopefully many great album reviews here at The Garbage Time.  One of my favorite bands My Morning Jacket released their seventh studio album, The Waterfall, Tuesday morning.  The alternative-country quintet from Louisville, Kentucky has bounced back from two mildly satisfactory albums to produce something truly great.  While The Waterfall doesn't eclipse 2005's Z, (nothing ever will, as it's one of the best albums ever recorded) My Morning Jacket does their best to recapture that magic on album number seven.

1. Believe (Nobody Knows)

Over the year's My Morning Jacket has always been able to deliver a great opening track on each of their studio albums.  The use of tape manipulation and musique concrète caught me by complete surprise immediately out of the gate on Believe (Nobody Knows).  Keyboardist Bo Koster's early statement as a major contributor in the album's overall sound begins with an uplifting, hypnotic piano riff.  The chorus explodes with loud guitar chords from lead singer/rhythm guitarist Jim James.  Lead guitarist Carl Broemel plays more notes on this track alone than he did on the entire record Circuital, which is outstanding as MMJ are at their best when James and Broemel play off each other as guitarists.  If you listen closely, you can hear the rhythm section of bassist 'Two-Tone' Tommy Blankenship and the most underrated drummer in rock n' roll Patrick Hallahan continue to work their magic.  I can't wait to hear this song live.  Musically it's incredible.  My only concern is if James can attack the vocals with the same ferocity as he does with 'Gideon' when this song goes live.

2. Compound Fracture

I look at Compound Fracture as MMJ taking a Mulligan on Evil Urges' 'Highly Suspicious' and doing a better job of emulating Prince and the Revolution.  "Compound fracture, gotta set the bone" is a better lyric than "Peanut butter pudding surprise".  There's definitely a Led Zeppelin influence in this song as it reminds me of 'All My Love'.  Lyrically this song draws influence from Jim James' injury falling off the stage last tour.  Just when the song starts to get too repetitive, Hallahan changes the beat marvelously.  I can see the band extending the song live as Koster gets funky with the Hammond Organ like he's the late Ray Manzarek of The Doors.  There's a really cool Miami Jungle Version of Compound Fracture in the bonus tracks.  I imagine this is more of what the song will sound like live.  Seriously, My Morning Jacket needs to make Okonokos Part Deux on tour for this album.

3. Like a River

Usually I'm not the biggest fan of when Jim James decides to go folky on an MMJ record, because that means very little Patrick Hallahan on that particular song.  'Like a River' has this frenetic picking pattern that I thoroughly enjoy as the song gradually builds.  After a few listens, it almost of like an It Still Moves' 'Golden' and Circuital's 'Holdin' On To Black Metal' sonic fusion if that makes any sense.  What really stands out to me on the third track of The Waterfall is how engulfing it is in the last-minute and a half, swallowing me whole in a wall of sound.  It's continuing to grow on me.  Though it's not my favorite type of My Morning Jacket song, I believe many fans will enjoy this track.

4. In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)

The title track is also the best track on the record.  It sounds like a more complex song than The Who could ever play for Pete Townshend. I didn't think it was possible that we would hear the Wurlizter again from the Louisville quintet as it has become synonymous with the octaves of Circuital's 'Victory Dance'.  Koster does more than octaves on this Wurly riff.  Halfway through the song, it's like Black Sabbath took over.  Is Tony Iommi making a guest appearance on this track?  The syncopated power chords of James and the driving drumming of Hallahan give Broemel space to explore the middle of the fret board.  Prove me wrong, but I think In Its Infancy will prove problematic in live shows as it's a bit all over the place.  Not really in a bad way, but kind of how it was hard for your high school band to recreate Led Zeppelin's 'Black Dog' from your Mom's basement.

5. Get the Point

I love this song.  It has all the best features of an MMJ ballad.  From Hallahan's persistent brushstrokes on the snare to Broemel's excellent use of the steel guitar to James' angelic voice.  Great lyrics for a beautiful song about a relationship losing its excitement.  It's not quite 'Golden', but for a ballad in the middle of the record it certainly keeps you interested.  On vinyl the is the last track on side two and it does a great job transitioning to the latter half of The Waterfall.

6. Spring (Among the Living)

If you like 'Victory Dance' or 'Wordless Chorus', Spring (Among the Living) is right up your alley.  Lyrically this song is all about rebirth and getting back to feeling alive again.  Each time I listen to it, I pick up on something new that I hadn't heard before.  I'm on listen twenty-four.  There are three distinct parts to this track that stand out to me:  Patrick Hallahan's versatility on the skins, Broemel's Dondante-like guitar soloing, and the Rubber Soul vibe I got each time I listened to this track.  Spring, like the season itself, is bursting with controlled chaos.  I cannot wait to see the boys recreate this one live!

7. Thin Line

This one is straight out of the sixties.  It's like the Kentucky boys were listening to a lot of Pet Sounds before recording this tune.  The guitar solo cuts through the song kind of like how Brian May of Queen used to do on a Freddie Mercury piano ballad.  It's a challenge for me to hear what James is singing as the music is so mesmerizing.  All I'm getting is that 'It's a thin line between lovin' and wasting our time".  That's good enough for me.  This might be a deeper cut on the album but it's still very much enjoyable to listen to.

8. Big Decisions

Big Decisions is the lead single off The Waterfall.  It's a good choice by the band as it illustrates the entire group's talents in a pop-sensible way.  It commands your attention in the way that Z's 'What A Wonderful Man' does.  I haven't heard this amount of strings on an MMJ song since 'Gideon', but that's a good thing.  The call and response efforts by Broemel and Koster give this song great sonic depth.  The Fleet Foxes sounding song probably kicks some serious tail live, too.  My only issue is that the bridge drags on too long.  Then again, it's a bridge and that's what they tend to do.  Big Decisions was a good choice for a lead single.

9. Tropics (Erase Traces)

Tropics (Erase Traces) continues the lovely trend of intricate guitar melodies found on The Waterfall.  Lyrically, it's all about getting away from yourself on an out-of-body experience in a far away land.  Hallahan's fills and driving beat gives this song structure that's craving the great escape.  Seriously, just about every song on The Waterfall can find its way into a live set.  The muffled electric guitar glissando increases in frequency until it happens at every bar during another snarly solo.  Tropics might be this record's version of 'Off The Record'.  It's just that good and it scares me a bit.

10. Only Memories Remain

The final track on The Waterfall is also the longest at over seven minutes in length.  This holds true with every MMJ record.  This could easily be a Fleetwood Mac hit.  Vocally James reminds me of Christine McVie.  It's like the bizarro version of Dondante, with much brighter chords and lyrical content.  The guitar work on this record is impressive from start to finish.  While Only Memories Remain can't eclipse Z's Dondante as my favorite last track by My Morning Jacket, I'm all for letting it grow on me.

Overall, this is a great record from the Louisville, Kentucky quintet.  Lyrically I think it's MMJ's deepest record to date.  Much of that has to do with drawing inspiration from Jim James' fall from stage on the Circuital Tour.  The band continued to embrace the reverb and ambient recording tactics of Circuital but with much better songs.  If there's filler on this record, there might be just a song or two.

All members of the band shined on this record.  Hallahan continues to impress behind the drum kit.  Blankenship is as smooth as ever with his bass lines.  Expect them to pop more in live shows.  They always do.  Koster comes to the forefront on a few songs with his exploration of the keyboard.  Broemel gets back to doing what he does best, playing great lead guitar and shimmering with that country-sounding steel guitar of his.  Perhaps most importantly, Jim James should feel immense pride with this record.  It's not Z but I believe that it has the staying power of 2003's It Still Moves.  From MMJ, that's a good as you can hope for.  I'll give their seventh album, The Waterfall, four out of five stars.

I admire the enthusiasm of this review, but the connections to other music that are made are sure not ones I have made. It is almost like he heard a different album than me.

My Morning Jacket's "The Waterfall": You've never heard Jim James like this

The frontman switches up his approach on what may be My Morning Jacket's darkest — and best — album yet
Stephen Deusner


I really like Deusners reviews. He goes way back at p4k and really nails his take on the waterfall. 

http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/listening-post-brief-reviews-of-select-releases-20150510 (http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/listening-post-brief-reviews-of-select-releases-20150510)

My Morning Jacket, "The Waterfall" (ATO). Indie-rock lovers are supposed to despise jam bands. So My Morning Jacket must be confusing for them. The band makes records that push all the proper indie buttons – obvious fascination with Bob Dylan and The Band, a full understanding of rustic Americana, a fearless experimental side that allows for the retention of actual hooks . But then, on the concert stage, the tunes turn into epic swirls of psychedelic sonic overload that suggest what it might sound like if Thin Lizzy covered Phish with Bob Dylan singing in his "Lay Lady Lay" voice. In broad, sweepingly general terms, this is the kind of thing indie-rockers despise. MMJ has made a career of bridging the gap – they are embraced by both the indie and jam camps, and they manage to routinely satisfy both of them. With "The Waterfall," its first album in four years, MMJ has crafted on of its finest and most cohesive efforts. It's an album that marries lyrical thematic content centered on human struggles with the big issues – our place in the natural order of things, the cruel and persistent effects of time's passage, how relationships withstand the ravages of years – to a huge, eminently soulful marriage of folk, rock, R&B, pop, country, and "jammy" aspects, all held together by Jim James' aching high tenor. There are bona fide "roll down the windows and crank it!" summer anthems; ("Big Decisions") ruminative Dylan-esque pieces; ("Like A River," "Only Memories Remain," "Hillside Song") and funky psychedelia ("Compound Fracture," "Believe (Nobody Knows)"). All of them work remarkably well, particularly when the deft, subtle production flourishes – strings, occasional horns, the application of gauzy reverb to James' voice when appropriate – are worked into the mix. "The Waterfall" captures MMJ at a peak. ½

http://www.treblezine.com/reviews/23147-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/ (http://www.treblezine.com/reviews/23147-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/)

My Morning Jacket has a history of letting the physical location of their recording influence the overall sound of the album itself. For their latest, The Waterfall, their travels took them to Stinson Beach, a veritable cul-de-sac of narrow beaches, natural wonders and big boulders about 30 miles north of San Francisco. Specifically, they holed up in Panoramic House, a studio high up on a hill, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Their initial objective was vague enough: Make a record. In the process, they painted a vast landscape composed of notes, beats, voices and textures.

The Waterfall opens with the musical equivalent of water trickling down and around rocks. On "Believe (Nobody Knows)," Jim James bounces and cascades through the verse, and the piano follows suit. You can't help but imagine a stream of rain seeking the ocean, kissing the stones along the way. The majestic chorus is the large body of water, welcoming its children home. On "Like a River," James sustains a falsetto over light instrumentation and orchestration with a melody that harkens back to the early '70s flower child movement; you can see the young women in the banks shedding their dresses for a dip, daisies still in their hair. The crashes on "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)" are, themselves, a waterfall that has been interrupted, and this point made clear in the lyrics, "again I stop the waterfall by simply thinking."

The nature theme continues, at least in a titular way, in "Spring (Among the Living)" and "Tropics (Erase Traces)," and they evoke the feelings implied in their names. The latter starts with an acoustic structure that is warm and calming, and even when it picks up, the minor chords and harmonies feel sandy and serene. Other songs, like "Compound Fracture" and "Big Decisions," don't appear to match the direction of the rest of the album, but they are also the more upbeat than the more picturesque tracks, providing textural contrast in that way.

The Waterfall ends with the eerily empty "Memories Remain." The sparseness of the instrumentation on this closing number hints of an empty or emptying room, as if the band is cleaning up their canvases and brushes and packing up their things. In their wake, they left behind a portrait of a northern California beach that does not have to be seen with the eyes to be pictured.

My Morning Jacket is easily the greatest band ever to have emerged from Louisville.

http://www.suindependent.com/news/id_8718/Album-Review:-The-Waterfall-by-My-Morning-Jacket.html (http://www.suindependent.com/news/id_8718/Album-Review:-The-Waterfall-by-My-Morning-Jacket.html)

Of course, the uninitiated most likely only know Louisville as a big town in Kentucky and immediately write it off as irrelevant redneck territory. Louisville seemingly has an invisible force field much like the glass dome that encapsulated Springfield in "The Simpsons Movie." Except Louisville's is made of magic rather than glass, and it keeps most of the low-IQ "yeehawness" of typical doofus Kentucky culture out. In short, it's the Austin or Portland of Kentucky.

To illustrate, one will immediately notice when visiting Louisville, like walking out an abattoir into an open field, a marked absence of the marble-mouthed southern accents that plague the rest of the region. Take it from a veteran of the Bible Belt that this can be a huge relief!

Sure, there's Lexington (which is really just a pile of old money), and there are a few other medium-sized cities, like Elizabethtown (Johnny Depp's hometown), Bowling Green (home to Cage The Elephant), and Owensboro, the self-proclaimed "Bluegrass Capitol of the World." But Louisville is the city that truly lies between Nashville and Cincinnati, at least culturally, and My Morning Jacket is the only band to have emerged from Kentucky onto the global music scene with any lasting power.

In retrospect, when MMJ frontman Jim James—and with a name like that, it already feels like there's a Jeff Foxworthy joke on the periphery—first released "The Tennessee Fire," not much happened. There was some shuffling of personnel, and it wasn't until 2005, with the release of "Z" that things really clicked for two reasons. First, the members who've comprised MMJ since then came on board. But more importantly, and perhaps in an effort to change things up as much as possible, James wisely employed John Leckie as producer—the same John Leckie who produced Radiohead's "The Bends." To that end, "Z" has more than once been referred to their "OK Computer"; furthermore, "Evil Urges" had the same exploratory feel as Radiohead's "Kid A." Just as Radiohead went from being some dudes with guitars to a collective of sound engineers, MMJ went from being something kind of folky or whatever to being hailed (and rightly so) by rock critic MJ Wycha as "The best thing to happen to rock in years," accolades that have been widely and consistently echoed for the past decade.

So "The Waterfall" can be heard as both a journey as well as a destination. It is speckled with various elements of previous records but refuses to settle firmly into any of it, instead content to display a kaleidoscopic aural plumage from soul to prog rock to driving '80s rock and country.

Like a returning champion entering the ring, "Believe (Nobody Knows)" opens confidently, dropping both lyrics and textures evocative of Phish's "Prince Caspian." There are traces of a drum machine as well as a melodic loop in the background, but it largely feels like the rock version of a punch in the face.

Almost as if to be contrarian, "Compound Fracture" brings jazz, Motown, and soft rock elements into play. Octave strings float unobtrusively over Gloria Gaynor-worthy "ooh-ooh-oohs," and James sounds a little like a cross between Lenny Kravitz and Don Henley, if you can imagine that. Drummer Patrick Hallahan lays it down like a boss, driving straight and solid while the rest of the band weaves together something that would closely resemble Steve Winwood or Bruce Hornsby if it didn't have so damned much swagger. In fact, it would be no surprise if this song actually got someone pregnant.

Again switching gears, James assumes a falsetto and picks up an acoustic guitar. "Like a River" sounds like something written from the foothills of Appalachia. Every bit of magic MMJ ever poured into anything in the past is present in "Like a River," which almost sounds like Joni Mitchell or Kansas merging bluegrass overtones with the grandeur of the tone poems of Richard Strauss.

"In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)" is dramatic and stage-ready, mixing The Who's "Who Are You?" with The Band's "Chest Fever" and even throwing a little Steve Miller keytar riffage in. Structurally, the body of the song is bookended by a low and dirty Fender Rhodes, and the song itself is bookended by folk as "Get the Point" follows, which is more arguably country music than . . . well, just about anything out of Nashville anymore that claims to be "country." Carl Broemel demonstrates his finesse with a pedal steel, which he coaxes and caresses like Gary Morse.

Another made-for-the-stadium wailer is "Spring (Among the Living)," an Iggy Pop-esque homage to the advent of warmer weather. In its wake, the summery "Thin Line" blends the Flaming Lips and Neil Young together into a relaxed yet impassioned dichotomy.

"Big Decisions" is a heavy-handed and exasperated appeal to someone "sweet and sincere, but so ruled by fear," whom he implores, "What do you want me to do? / Make all the big decisions for you?" For once, James sounds like a native Kentuckian, appropriately pronouncing "well, I can't" as "well, I cain't."

Effectively combining the plaintive simplicity of REM with the orchestral splendor of Yes, "Tropics (Erase Traces)" is equal parts prog rock and folk music. In contrast, and almost as an afterthought, "Only Memories Remain" is a hazy, bluesy afterparty, decidedly relaxed and bittersweetly navel-gazing.

"The Waterfall" is simply triumphant, the work of a quintet at their height. Mature without stagnating, it's their cleanest and most focused album yet. It blends a wide variety of influences into something unique without leaning on them as gimmicks. It's self-referential without being masturbatory or egoistic. It expands and even revives the decades-long rock narrative that, as of 2015, has largely dead-ended elsewhere in the music industry. If you happen to have ten bucks lying around, you'd be foolish not to spend it on "The Waterfall."

Review of The Waterfall Album by My Morning Jacket

http://www.contactmusic.com/my-morning-jacket/music/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall (http://www.contactmusic.com/my-morning-jacket/music/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall)

My Morning Jacket's seventh studio album 'The Waterfall', their first in four years, finds Jim James' five-piece band in a psychedelic and pastoral mood. It demonstrates many of the experimental tendencies of James' 2013 solo effort 'Regions Of Light And Sound Of God', but I must admit that I've warmed less to these songs than other critics. Culled from a productive set of sessions in Northern California, this is the first of two My Morning Jacket albums planned for the next twelve months. The tracks are infused with the hazy sunshine that you'd expect from that location, but many of them became background noise to me far too quickly. The material feels comfortable, familiar even, but it felt a bit like wallpaper. Intricate, very detailed and occasionally beautiful wallpaper, but wallpaper all the same.

That description does sound more detrimental than it should, but it is appropriate. Imagine landscapes that sprawl as far as you can see, littered with tiny details that you're more interested in than the overall picture. The term wallpaper may suggest repetition, there's little of that here, however the picture that's painted by James only temporarily catches your attention, that's where the analogy is strongest. To be fair, the moments where the ideas and sounds become less complex and more focussed are among My Morning Jacket's strongest work to date. There aren't enough of those moments for my money to make this one of their best albums though.

The emotional pinnacle of 'The Waterfall' is also perhaps its most striking moment; 'Get The Point' is a simple guitar lament to the breakdown of a relationship. It echoes the understated beauty of Paul McCartney's 'White Album' performance of 'Blackbird', comparisons have also been drawn elsewhere to Nilsson's 'Everybody's Talkin''. The song really is the jewel in the crown of 'The Waterfall', not least because it strips away some of the psychedelic haze to reveal James sharing an honesty that many of us find hard to put into words ("I hope you get the point, I think our love is done"). This is the most affecting break-up song I've heard in a long time, that much of the rest of the album doesn't reach this high water mark remains a problem for me. That's because I know that My Morning Jacket have the tools to prompt such a strong reaction as with this particular track.

That's not to say the other songs are dramatically disappointing, it's just parts of them feel perfunctory. Take, for example, opener 'Believe (Nobody Knows)'. The vocals, guitars and strings are gloriously bathed in reverb to up the ante of this feel-good anthem, but underneath Bo Koster's consistent keyboard part doesn't seem to have been afforded the same production flourishes, which renders it somewhat anodyne. That ultimately just becomes distracting. Elsewhere, 'Like A River' is a beautiful hymn to the countryside, but like many Fleet Foxes songs that it brings to mind, the track reaches a choral swirl and then doesn't really go anywhere.

When My Morning Jacket do hit their stride here, such as the first two singles, you remember quite how magnificent they can be. The Alt-Country stomp of 'Big Decisions' and the Technicolor wig out that closes 'Spring (Among The Living)' are both glorious to behold, but there just weren't enough of those moments for me in the overall picture. I'm hoping the second collection of material from these sessions contains a better balance of those striking details, which will make it stand out from the crowd. If 'The Waterfall' feels a little like wallpaper to me, that's probably because I'm hoping its sister record will be like that rug in the Big Lebowski, something to really pull the room together.

3/5

Jim Pusey

Album | My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall
by For Folk's Sake • 12 May 2015

http://www.forfolkssake.com/reviews/31724/album-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall (http://www.forfolkssake.com/reviews/31724/album-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall)

The idea was always there, in its infancy. The seed took root over many years.

So sings Jim James on 'In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)' – and, four years after their last album Circuital and 10 since the classic Z, My Morning Jacket are back in style. A typically sprawling journey through rock, folk and psychedelia, The Waterfall plays to the band's many strengths while sidestepping the odder diversions of 2008's Evil Urges.

If 'Believe (Nobody Knows)' is a slightly sluggish opening, the catchy 'Compound Fracture' quickly provides a sense of where the album is heading before it really hits its stride over the remainder of its first half. 'Like A River' is an apt title for a song that twinkles prettily into being while the quasi-title track is perhaps the album's stand-out moment.

Pink Floyd come to mind on 'Only Memories Remain' and 'Spring (Among The Living)' – throw in 'Tropics (Erase Traces)' and there really are a lot of brackets on this album – while 'Thin Line' actually mentions "crazy diamonds". Elsewhere, a pair of jaunty-sounding songs actually contain conflicted romantic messages – "You're sweet and sexy, but..." amid the chiming power chords of single 'Big Decisions' and an amicable approach to a break-up on the tender, country-hued 'Get The Point'.

James is 37 now and, as hinted at in the album's lyrics and discussed in recent interviews, has been through the wringer both emotionally and physically through his career. But if this strong set of songs is any indication, there's plenty of life in MMJ yet – and James has even suggested the next album might not be so long in coming.

For now, though, be sure to enjoy all this one has to offer – there's plenty to go at.

Words: Tom White

Quote from: johnnYYac on May 12, 2015, 03:57 PM
Album | My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall
by For Folk's Sake • 12 May 2015

http://www.forfolkssake.com/reviews/31724/album-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall (http://www.forfolkssake.com/reviews/31724/album-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall)

The idea was always there, in its infancy. The seed took root over many years.

So sings Jim James on 'In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)' – and, four years after their last album Circuital and 10 since the classic Z, My Morning Jacket are back in style. A typically sprawling journey through rock, folk and psychedelia, The Waterfall plays to the band's many strengths while sidestepping the odder diversions of 2008's Evil Urges.

If 'Believe (Nobody Knows)' is a slightly sluggish opening, the catchy 'Compound Fracture' quickly provides a sense of where the album is heading before it really hits its stride over the remainder of its first half. 'Like A River' is an apt title for a song that twinkles prettily into being while the quasi-title track is perhaps the album's stand-out moment.

Pink Floyd come to mind on 'Only Memories Remain' and 'Spring (Among The Living)' – throw in 'Tropics (Erase Traces)' and there really are a lot of brackets on this album – while 'Thin Line' actually mentions "crazy diamonds". Elsewhere, a pair of jaunty-sounding songs actually contain conflicted romantic messages – "You're sweet and sexy, but..." amid the chiming power chords of single 'Big Decisions' and an amicable approach to a break-up on the tender, country-hued 'Get The Point'.

James is 37 now and, as hinted at in the album's lyrics and discussed in recent interviews, has been through the wringer both emotionally and physically through his career. But if this strong set of songs is any indication, there's plenty of life in MMJ yet – and James has even suggested the next album might not be so long in coming.

For now, though, be sure to enjoy all this one has to offer – there's plenty to go at.

Words: Tom White

"sweet and sexy"  :rolleyes:

Quote from: Angelo on May 13, 2015, 01:17 AM

Quote from: johnnYYac on May 12, 2015, 03:57 PM
Album | My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall
by For Folk's Sake • 12 May 2015

http://www.forfolkssake.com/reviews/31724/album-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall (http://www.forfolkssake.com/reviews/31724/album-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall)

The idea was always there, in its infancy. The seed took root over many years.

So sings Jim James on 'In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)' – and, four years after their last album Circuital and 10 since the classic Z, My Morning Jacket are back in style. A typically sprawling journey through rock, folk and psychedelia, The Waterfall plays to the band's many strengths while sidestepping the odder diversions of 2008's Evil Urges.

If 'Believe (Nobody Knows)' is a slightly sluggish opening, the catchy 'Compound Fracture' quickly provides a sense of where the album is heading before it really hits its stride over the remainder of its first half. 'Like A River' is an apt title for a song that twinkles prettily into being while the quasi-title track is perhaps the album's stand-out moment.

Pink Floyd come to mind on 'Only Memories Remain' and 'Spring (Among The Living)' – throw in 'Tropics (Erase Traces)' and there really are a lot of brackets on this album – while 'Thin Line' actually mentions "crazy diamonds". Elsewhere, a pair of jaunty-sounding songs actually contain conflicted romantic messages – "You're sweet and sexy, but..." amid the chiming power chords of single 'Big Decisions' and an amicable approach to a break-up on the tender, country-hued 'Get The Point'.

James is 37 now and, as hinted at in the album's lyrics and discussed in recent interviews, has been through the wringer both emotionally and physically through his career. But if this strong set of songs is any indication, there's plenty of life in MMJ yet – and James has even suggested the next album might not be so long in coming.

For now, though, be sure to enjoy all this one has to offer – there's plenty to go at.

Words: Tom White

"sweet and sexy"  :rolleyes:

Lol, that's how I still hear the lyrics even though I know it's wrong.

Love the style of the Van Hunt review.   Very cool.

Me too, BH. I actually have a Van Hunt CD in my collection here from my days working at a record store. I used to play it often in store. Not sure how it holds up today as that was probably 10 years ago.

Album Review: My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall

http://fiusm.com/2015/05/12/album-review-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/ (http://fiusm.com/2015/05/12/album-review-my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall/)

By: Adrian Herrera
Staff Writer

On their 7th studio album, Kentucky rockers My Morning Jacket prove that they can still weave through genres as easily as a river meanders through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Shifting from neo-soul to psychedelic-folk to straight on blues-rock, The Waterfall never ceases to impress with a kaleidoscopic palette of sounds that root themselves firmly in classic Americana, but branch steadily up into the cosmos.

Coming out of a spinal injury, a break-up, and extreme writer's block, front-man Jim James struggles to relocate himself among the ruins of his past. His straightforward lyrics and earnest, country-boy croon lay his heart bare as each song tells of hardships he has overcome: a lost love, stifled creativity, self-doubt. But don't mistake this album for a cry for help – it's a victory march, a triumph of acceptance and positivity over self-deprecation. The Waterfall is itself a metaphor for the flow of ideas that creators battle to control without overflowing or drying up. On the title track, James realizes, "the idea was always there in its infancy, the seed took root over many years." He understands that the desire to create is something innate within him, but more importantly that he must follow his own internal current down that river. The opening track, "Believe," finds James wailing, "believe nobody knows," a call for faith in one's self, and a shot at all the critics and even friends that think they know his path better than he does. On "Get the Point," we witness the death of a relationship. Jim James wishes his former lover, "all the love in this world," but hopes that they "get the point:" a tender yet firm message that shows James standing tall and resolute all on his own, needing no outside affirmation to find peace in his choices.

As Jim James wades out of the mess of his emotions, the band provides a sonic foundation that is heavy enough for him to stand on. Like a great DJ, the band has an ability to find aural links between styles that don't immediately suggest each other. The closing song, "Only Memories," is a slow, patient ballad that is as much reminiscent of Motown R&B as it is of George Harrison's All Things Must Pass. Mixing 70's pop song-writing sensibility with a 21st century knack for experimentation, the instrumentation and production are clean and purposeful, making this the most stylistically varied, yet cohesive sounding My Morning Jacket album to date.

Far-out yet familiar, The Waterfall is a work of artistic maturity – an album about perseverance in the face of self-doubt by a band that has been around the block a few times, had some fights along the way, but still manages to know itself. There are loud, proud songs, quiet, pained songs, and ethereal tracks of introspection and mystery. With so much variety, anyone can find songs on this album that speak to them directly. Give this one a good, thorough listen – its depth of emotion and range of styles will reward you.

Stand-Out Tracks: "Like a River," "The Waterfall," "Get the Point," "Thin Line," "Tropics," "Only Memories"

http://www.thefourohfive.com/music/review/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-143 (http://www.thefourohfive.com/music/review/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-143)

There's always an air of poise and unease amongst fans when My Morning Jacket announce the release of a new album. The Kentucky group are serial nomads, vacating the ground they've conquered before everybody has had a chance to notice the flag which has been hoisted. By the time that the likes of Fleet Foxes and Band of Horses were attracting critical acclaim and chart success for a reverb-heavy sound based on that of My Morning Jacket's first few records, the group had evolved. It was 2008, and despite asking the question "did we just not do it long enough?" they were focussed on working with the psychedelic, pulsating sounds that define their albums Z and Evil Urges rather than "one more record of harmonies and folk shit."

And the group emerged from that period with what seemed like the all-important final piece of their jigsaw. They held two immersive and spiritualistic records that were able to take their live shows to a hypnotic, ethereal place that not many music fans had experienced before. Their reaction to the inevitable accolades and success that followed was typically aloof. In the wake of American Dad basing an episode on their protagonists' obsession with the band, they received adrenaline shot of exposure. You'd have expected that My Morning Jacket would react to this by continuing in the same vein stylistically and enjoying their well-earned time in the sun. However, Jim James and co. were unfazed, instead opting for a rawer, more sonically honest approach with their 2011 follow-up, Circuital.

History shows that their decision-making may have held them back in terms of mainstream success, but it's never been about that for the group. James' only vision is to "somehow just be true to ourselves and be able to keep making a living." This instinctual decision-making is one of the reasons that they've managed to be both relevant and a step ahead of their sound for the past fifteen years. Four years on from Circuital, we're told a story of new beginnings and acceptance in its close relative, The Waterfall.

This collection is built similarly to Circuital and there's not too much that will be completely foreign for listeners. Whether it's the folk-influenced aesthetics of 'Get The Point' or the immersive 'Tropics (Erase Traces)', most of the components featured have a sense of culpability from the bands past and James' recent solo endeavours. In writing through a self-reflective collage, they are trying new formulas in order to gain a new perspective on older methods. In doing so, the songwriting has become more dynamic and tighter. Otherwise, you can detect an atmosphere influenced by the era of the mid-seventies through to the eighties in which soul and rock n' roll walked hand in hand. Whether it's shards of the soulful Bryan Ferry on 'Compound Fracture' or the understated melodic aperitifs of George Harrison with 'Big Decisions', the material has a pronounced devotion to that warmth.

In the latter half of The Waterfall comes 'Thin Line' - one of the best songs that the group has written to date - and it captures great tension. It has a seemingly simplistic calling hook made up of saccharine, legato style instrumentation and nimble guitar work from Carl Broemel that conjures an atmosphere of calmness but it is brazenly answered by an off-kilter, minor key response. From the top to the bottom, the song walks this tightrope throughout, punctuating the unique clash between brightness and reality that adds a great depth to the whole record.

The Waterfall is inescapably progressive in its developed lyrical content and style. It is brimming with lush sweetness, melancholy, frustration and acceptance that documents the meteoric feeling of moving on from a love in your life. "I hope you get the point, the thrill is gone. I hope you get the point, I think our love is done." James sings on 'Get The Point'. As you can hear on 'Big Decisions' and 'Thin Line' for the first time in their career, James sounds like he is at a loss with what to do and his only remaining option is to walk away from the whole thing. This shift in style doesn't feel like a pessimistic or destructive process though, ultimately leaving you with a different shade of optimism. Instead of painting in broad strokes of spiritual language or speaking through a veil of hopefulness like in "wonderful, the way I feel," he frankly tells us the release's final sentiment; that despite his loss, what's "done is done" and "the love we share outlives us all." It represents the biggest evolution in the group's dialogue since their '99 introduction, At Dawn The Tennessee Fire.

This record should be coupled with its predecessor but it without doubt exceeds its ambitions. Whilst this as much about honesty and a return to core values as Circuital, it has come from a more fraught, pertinent transitional period in the group's time. In many ways, it feels like the bookend to this era for the quintet. Sentimentally, it's a collection obsessed thematically by loss, the unknown, and new beginnings ('Spring Among The Living'). This is a bittersweet send-off to what once was ('Only Memories Remain'), and that idea of new beginnings has bled into the songwriting. Those expecting the sort of upheaval in sound from My Morning Jacket that we've become accustomed to in the past will be disappointed, but the ground they've covered is in unusual territories like language and its intense bindings to the instrumentation. And though these movements can currently seem minor and a little tertiary, if history has taught us anything, it is that we need a little time to pass before we can fully appreciate the significance of the five-piece's decision-making.

Rating: 7.5/10

first login since 2008 (how i remembered any of my details is beyond me)

FINALLY!!!! while I liked Evil Urges and Circuital, this is next level. 4th listen on shit headphones at a work computer older than my first jizz sock, and it still sounds like everything ive craved on an MMJ album since discovering them in january 06 and worked backward through their catalog! Can't wait to see them rip into this stuff live.

My Morning Jacket continues to defy genres

http://www.thespectrum.com/story/entertainment/2015/05/21/morning-jacket-continues-defy-genres/27732403/ (http://www.thespectrum.com/story/entertainment/2015/05/21/morning-jacket-continues-defy-genres/27732403/)

A problem has plagued My Morning Jacket since its brilliant 2005 album, "Z." Each time the Louisville quintet comes close to replicating that genius there are always one or two tracks that seem to derail the groove train.

Well they have finally pulled it off with "The Waterfall," the seventh album from frontman Jim James and crew. This is My Morning Jacket doing what they do best, pulling from a variety of influences and genres — from folk, country and Southern rock to soul, funk and progressive rock — and combining them in a way that is entirely unique.

The brilliance of MMJ is how the band seamlessly integrates these genres, not only within songs but from song to song, going from country on one track to rock 'n' roll on the next while still managing to maintain a cohesive sound. Anchored by Carl Broemel's mournful pedal steel, "Get The Point" is a gorgeous country break-up song that immediately precedes the pulsating rocker "Spring (Among The Living)," where Broemel turns in his guitar for a blazing saxophone.

"Like A River" finds MMJ embracing folk music more than ever as James' ethereal vocals soar over a delicate and pristine mix of acoustic guitars and swooning pedal steel. Meanwhile, "Believe" has that Radiohead meets Allman Brothers things going on that the band explored on "Z," but the atmospherics are at once rootsier and spacier than ever while the guitar licks are even sweeter than before.

The Jacket has long championed the art of guitar solos and strong leads in the world of indie rock, where lyrics and hooks often overshadow rock 'n' roll heroics. "Thin Line" continues that mission, kicking off with a classic rock riff straight out of the early '70s (via Radiohead), while "Tropics (Erase Traces)" finds the band building an epic track off a simple but undeniably addictive little guitar noodle before exploding into a headbang-worthy solo, making a case for "The Waterfall" as the guitar album of the year.

It's not just the guitars, though. Bo Koster's keyboard hook that opens "Compound Fracture" is one of the catchiest bits yet from this band as James does his best white-boy soul. James also brings his soulful side to the elegant closing track, "Only Memories Remain," where his falsetto wraps itself around lines like, "Our earthly bodies will surely fall / But the love we share outlives us all" — a line that could be cheesy if it wasn't so beautifully delivered.

The album's first single, the ultra-catchy Southern rocker "Big Decisions" marks a first for MMJ as James — the primary songwriter — collaborates outside the band, co-writing with song doctor Dan Wilson, the former Semisonic frontman who has penned tracks for artists as diverse as Taylor Swift, Adele, Nas, Dixie Chicks and Weezer.

But the key track here is "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)." It's as good as anything the band has done ... maybe better. It's a song that has everything, from a funky groove to a beautiful chorus melody and tight instrumentation to captivating lyrics. In short, it's a five-minute-12-second thesis on why My Morning Jacket is one of today's great bands.

Quote from: bikemail on May 05, 2015, 03:05 PM
Here's a great longform piece from Stereogum that reviews the new album, but also kinda looks at MMJ in the context of the musical landscape of today:
http://www.stereogum.com/1799475/opening-the-world-again-my-morning-jackets-the-waterfall-and-the-new-americana/franchises/essay/ (http://www.stereogum.com/1799475/opening-the-world-again-my-morning-jackets-the-waterfall-and-the-new-americana/franchises/essay/)

This is by far my favorite write-up on the album.  That guy fucking gets it.  Or we get it in the same way.  Or we both just really like the album.  Whatever.  And his ideas about a "New Americana" are pretty interesting too.  It's a dense read but well worth it.

http://nodepression.com/album-review/my-morning-jacket-waterfall

by Post To Wire
July 10, 2015

My Morning Jacket's mystical musical powers seemed to be waning on their last two albums. There was a restlessness at play, a desire to shrug off the shackles of cosmic Americana rock and show they could do anything, or at least whatever they wanted. It didn't work when they swung the pendulum too far outside many of their fans' comfort zones. Subsequently Evil Urges and Circuital felt adrift and untethered from what makes the band so commanding when they get it right. Hopes then for this album was a return to form, not necessarily back to the early days of It Still Moves but at least to a more centred and classically freewheeling My Morning Jacket.

The Waterfall does that most of the time but not all the time. There are moments where they hit that golden streak and find the rarified air, where Jim James' voice soars effortlessly and beautifully, with ease. "Thin Line" is a prime example, with its sweet soulful mid-paced groove and James is at his reverb-laden, falsetto best. "Get the Point" has the same euphoric effect but it succeeds due to its Harry Nilsson-styled melody. Sonically, "In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)" starts with dissonant post-rock chords reminiscent of Slint before blossoming into a yacht-rock sounding epic spread over five minutes. It's the centrepiece of the album and shows how effectively the band can harness those disparate elements of their style into one glorious song.

The weaker moments on The Waterfall are only on a handful of its songs and they never approach the dire low points of previous albums such as "Highly Suspicious" or "Holdin' On To Black Metal". Instead they are mediocre My Morning Jacket tracks, they inspire little emotional reaction or head nodding, they just drift by. "Compound Fracture" is faux-soul, like Scritti Politti without the art school leanings while "Spring (Among The Living)" never really steps out of the shadow of U2 or even Pink Floyd until it builds in intensity for far too short a period toward the end of the song.

So yes, a return to form of sorts. It isn't wholly convincing but the band shows they can edit themselves and still write superb songs that draw from rock, Americana, soul and psychedelic music. They're still writing cosmic music but they've learnt that to dial into their muse they need to keep one foot planted on the Earth.
7/10

Chris Familton

POST TO WIRE

From the awesome Stereogum essay by Ryan Leas:

"MMJ are committed to the search for wonder. The sense that there's something ineffable and otherworldly to still be located in guitars and voice and drums, the sense that there's something ineffable and otherworldly to still be located when you use those tools to sift through the landscape around us. It's easy to lose a sense of wonder in the 21st century, in America. The sensory overload these days, the sheer ability to access anything at any time, can be overwhelming to the point of deadening. It's harder for something to be shocking or beautiful or incredible because you see a stream of such things in your Twitter feed every day. "

Excellent, thoughtful and articulate writing about what makes MMJ still great, even though I don't like The Waterfall as much as Ryan and many others do.  I dig this kind of essay immensely.

Hello All!
I'm Ryan!!!
I've been a MMJ fan for about 3 years now. I saw them live 2 times (once as the headlining band and other time with Wilco and Bob Dylan). This band is AMAZING!
I bought 'The Waterfall' on vinyl and wow, it is nice! It's a 2LP - pressed at 45RPM! And the booklet and cover are gorgeous!
I made a fun YouTube video about MMJ and' The Waterfall' on vinyl. If there are fans or anyone that is not sure who or what My Morning Jacket is... Please check it out!
Thank You!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=779Y0_t1EMM
OK COOL!

at first I thought Ryan was some sort of well designed spammer, but that's a pretty cool video.

Ryan - I posted in the Vinyl section that the Badman pressing of It Still Moves is available on eBay right now.

popmarket has The Waterfall boxed set on sale for $49.95!
https://www.popmarket.com/products/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-vinyl-2lp-7-box-set?utm_source=PM_Contingency&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email%20%7C%2020160803%20%7C%20MMJ (https://www.popmarket.com/products/my-morning-jacket-the-waterfall-vinyl-2lp-7-box-set?utm_source=PM_Contingency&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email%20%7C%2020160803%20%7C%20MMJ)