The Waterfall by My Morning Jacket

The Waterfall, My Morning Jacket's seventh studio album, came out on May 4, 2015, on ATO Records, produced by Tucker Martine and frontman Jim James. After two years on the road behind Circuital, the band took a break, then came back together in late 2013 and spent eighteen months on the record, much of it cut at a hilltop studio at Stinson Beach, California, with the band living in rented houses by the sea.

You can hear the coastline in it: a warm, rolling sound that wanders through folk, R&B and psychedelia. James brought in half-finished lyrics so the songs could take shape in the room, and a back injury slowed him down along the way. The words cover injury, romance, heartbreak and faith, but the thread running through them is starting over, and "Big Decisions" plays like a clear-eyed step into that fresh start. Critics heard an improvement on the previous two albums.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.