My Morning Jacket's new album drops digitally on Friday

My Morning Jacket will release their new album on Friday via ATO Records. The Waterfall II was inspired by the band’s idyllic surroundings in Stinson Beach, CA which frontman Jim James likened to “living on our own little moon.”

There, the Kentucky-bred five-piece ended up creating over two dozen songs at the mountaintop studio known as Panoramic House. Though they initially considered putting out a triple album, the band ultimately decided that less would be more at the time and divided the project into two halves, releasing the first segment as The Waterfall: a 2015 full-length that earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Alternative Music Album. My Morning Jacket are now set to share the second half of the project as The Waterfall II.

Fans will get to hear the album in its entirety during an online listening party being hosted by the band on Facebook and YouTube at 9pm ET this Thursday, July 9 before the album arrives at all DSPs on July 10. Album pre-orders, including both standard and deluxe versions featuring 180-gram vinyl with Zoetrope labels in a gatefold foil jacket, are available now. The Waterfall II will be released on CD and vinyl on August 28.

SET REMINDER: THE WATERFALL II LISTENING PARTY

PRE-ORDER THE WATERFALL II

As James reveals, the decision to unearth The Waterfall II was sparked from a bit of serendipity in the early days of self-quarantine. While out on a walk, he placed his music library on shuffle and soon came upon “Spinning My Wheels,” its lyrics confessing to feeling “hypnotized from doing the same old thing.” Struck by the song’s enduring relevance, James revisited the other tracks reserved from the Panoramic House sessions and found that they invited a welcome moment of self-reflection—an outcome perhaps even more perfectly suited to the chaos of the current day than the circumstances of their recording.

The Waterfall II conveys James’s message that “there is hope beyond the pain and loss, if you learn to flow with life like water.”

Overall, the band hopes that the album might lead others to look beyond what’s human-made in the search for solace and renewal. “As so many of us feel out of tune and long for the world to be a better place, we have to look to nature and the animals and learn from them: learn to love, accept, move on, and respect each other,” says James. “We gotta work for it and change our ways before it’s too late, and get in harmony with love and equality for all of humanity and for nature too.”

My Morning Jacket will perform on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday July 15.

Track listing:

Spinning My Wheels
Still Thinkin
Climbing The Ladder
Feel You
Beautiful Love (Wasn’t Enough)
Magic Bullet
Run It
Wasted
Welcome Home
The First Time