My Morning Jacket

My Morning Jacket came together in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1998, with Jim James singing and playing guitar, and from the start they treated rock and country as places to get gloriously lost in. The roots always show, but the songs keep drifting off down experimental back roads and into full psychedelic haze. The Tennessee Fire, their 1999 debut, found its first real audience over in Europe, and At Dawn, in 2001, won them a big following at home before the lineup went through a round of changes.

Then came ATO Records and the albums that made the name. It Still Moves, in 2003, is big and sprawling, with "One Big Holiday" charging out of the gate, "Mahgeetah" cruising and "Golden" glowing like a porch light at dusk. Z, in 2005, was the one the critics fell for: tighter and stranger, with "Off the Record" bouncing along, "Wordless Chorus" floating off into the ether, and "Gideon" and "Dondante" reaching for the rafters. These days the band is James out front, Carl Broemel on guitar, Tom Blankenship on bass, Bo Koster on keyboards and Patrick Hallahan on drums.

A good share of their following through the 2000s was won on stage, one night at a time. Evil Urges, in 2008, divided fans and critics alike, with "I'm Amazed" among its songs, and Circuital, their sixth album, got a cooler, more measured hearing in 2011, though "Holdin' on to Black Metal" is as gleefully odd as anything in their catalog.

The Waterfall, their seventh, followed in 2015 with "Big Decisions", then The Waterfall II in 2020, a self-titled record in 2021 and a tenth album, Is, in 2025, carrying "Time Waited". They still sound like a band chasing something just past the horizon.

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