Review: Kentucky’s own My Morning Jacket captures pre-pandemic snapshot in new album

“I beg your pardon for this interruption,” Jim James offers by way of introducing My Morning Jacket’s first set of new studio songs in six years (a record set for release this weekend.) That odd juxtaposition – making a re-acquaintance seem like an intrusion – is a tip off, as what James and the rest of the veteran Louisville band offer on its new, self-titled album (complete with charismatic cover art from Lexington’s own Robert Beatty), is a study of contrasts.

Specifically, it hinges on moods from two worlds – the literal one with all its troubled delights and imperfections and a less tangible alternative where flaws are as prevalent as fantasies.

There is the usual abundance of stylistic shape-shifting here that has become a trademark for My Morning Jacket – strides of pop melancholy that erupt into psychedelia, vocals from James that leap from reverb-drenched meditations to conversational directness and a general sense of lyrical grace that can quickly turn anthemic.

While all of the extremes are heightened on “My Morning Jacket,” the record is, in short, the work of a troubled band navigating troubled times. In the end, thankfully, it emerges victorious.

The songs on “My Morning Jacket” are the cumulative outcomes of a band that nearly dissolved during an extended hiatus. No wonder so much of this music seems rooted in uncertainty, whether it is for the band’s future or James’ personal worldview. “Never in the Real World” perhaps best reflects such a dichotomy. Introduced with the looseness of a mid ‘70s Rolling Stones ballad, it builds its anthemic ensemble tension with James’ lyrics yearning for an ease of expression in the world at hand that equals the very active conversing within his imagination.

Such duality plays out more bluntly during “Lucky to Be Alive,” a tale of redemption and gratitude that unfolds with Brian Wilson-level warmth before bursting into a giddy, calliope-like groove and an eventual scorched guitar jam worthy of Neil Young.

At times, James simplifies matters and surrenders to bliss, as on “Love, Love, Love,” a blast of ethereal pop-soul. But even here, the mood shifts. While the Prince-like undercurrent remains constant, James adds in a neo-reggae groove to punctuate the song’s mantra-like affirmation (“the more you give, yeah, the more you get now”) before Carl Broemel hijacks everything for a wonderfully corrosive guitar break.

One would think such a swirling pit of sound and emotions would be the product of the COVID-19 pandemic. After all, the last 19 months have been enough to scramble anyone’s psyche. But all of “My Morning Jacket” was recorded in Los Angeles with James as producer and engineer just before lockdown occurred. The band has been sitting on this music ever since.

That’s fascinating and more than a bit fortuitous, especially when you listen to the album-opening “Regularly Scheduled Programing.” The signposts James sings of (“programming to drown out how we feel, fresh fiction rewritin’ how we think, screen time addiction replacin’ real life and love”) may have grown more dangerously luminous over the last year and a half, but they were constructed long before COVID hit.

It’s perhaps fitting that such a tug-of-war album that begins with “Regularly Scheduled Programming” ends with “I Could Never Get Enough,” a love song of delicacy, wonder and no small level of uncertainty. It breezes along with a disarming sunniness that mixes acoustic guitar and synths into a suitably time-tripping lullaby. Like so much of “My Morning Jacket,” the song hopes for comfort and compassion, even if they are mere bandages for the wounds of a more seriously battered world.