My Morning Jacket will release their new album, The Waterfall II, this Friday, July 10th, via ATO Records.
The night before the album’s arrival, My Morning Jacket will host an online listening party on Facebook and YouTube, July 9th at 9 p.m. ET. Fans can also preorder The Waterfall II on CD and vinyl — including a deluxe edition on 180-gram vinyl with Zoetrope labels and a gatefold foil jacket — with the physical versions dropping August 28th.
The Waterfall II — as its title suggests — is a follow-up to the band’s 2015 album, The Waterfall, and its tracks were recorded during the same sessions as its predecessor at Panoramic House studio in Stinson Beach, California. At the time, My Morning Jacket considered releasing all the music they’d recorded as a triple-album, but they ultimately decided to pare back the project.
Per a press release, My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James was inspired to unearth the unreleased tracks from The Waterfall sessions while taking a walk one day at the start of the COVID-19 quarantine. He was listening to his music library on shuffle when one of the unreleased songs, “Spinning My Wheels,” came on and he was struck by the resonance of a line about feeling “hypnotized from doing the same old thing.”
“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,” James said in a statement. “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.”