“We let improv take its course”

Jim James speaks to Stevie Chick.

What brought My Morning Jacket back together again?

“We did four shows in 2019 that really lit the spark again and made us want to get back in the studio. We really felt that old-time magic – that natural, wonderful feeling of creating music with friends. We didn’t really have a time frame or pressure – we just went in the studio and started knocking around tons of ideas I had written over the last few years, and let improv take its course, as well. It was literally just the five of us in the studio – no producer, no engineer – so we got to just focus on our energy as a group in this beautiful way that took us back to how it all started.”

What did your solo work allow that couldn’t be accommodated within My Morning Jacket? “They’re just different worlds. For reasons I don’t fully understand, songs will tell me where they want to go. I enjoy playing music with lots of different people and my solo albums give me the ability to do that, whereas My Morning Jacket is the sound created by the five of us, the circle of us being together.”

What inspired the remarkable The Devil’s In The Details?

“It’s about the confusion and isolation that capitalism, greed, social media and television have woven into our lives – that so many people feel more at home online or at the shopping mall than out in nature or really connecting with people. Almost everything evil that we encounter, such as war, is born of the greed of the few who control everything and keep wanting more and more, and it’s driving us and the planet closer and closer to destruction.”

What made you want to make this, your ninth album, an eponymous record?

“I have always just loved the power of the eponymous records. There is something so cool and mysterious and powerful about it – just the name of the artist and nothing else – poof! Magic. And it felt fitting, since we had been gone awhile, and had not been sure if we would come back or not, and it felt so good to get to make another record. Just let the name of the band be the title, and the sound of the music can speak for itself.”