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My Morning Jacket's 'The Waterfall II' Can Hypnotize

Whereas My Morning Jacket's The Waterfall contemplated conflict, The Waterfall II identifies healing and personal transformation as the next stage of being.

                                      
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        Jim James' 'Uniform Distortion' Wonders How We Can Keep Making the Same Mistakes Over and Over
    
Richard Driver

        26 Jun 2018
    
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PopMatters is moving to WordPress. We will publish a few essays daily while we develop the new site. We hope the beta will be up sometime late next week.

Whereas My Morning Jacket's The Waterfall contemplated conflict, The Waterfall II identifies healing and personal transformation as the next stage of being.

It took him six years to make, but My Morning Jacket's Carl Broemel drew from surprising personal places to craft his latest solo effort.

Six years in the making, the second solo offering from the My Morning Jacket guitarist is tender, nostalgic, and often sweet. Neko Case, Laura Veirs, and MMJ buddies are on hand to help.

In case you forgot, this video is here to remind you that My Morning Jacket play in front of large crowds sometimes.

My Morning Jacket headline Day Two, bringing hometown rock glory to Louisville's riverfront.

You've got to want to rearrange and keep it off the record, off the record. Unless that record is the 556th most acclaimed album of all time. A 2005 mainstay is this week's Counterbalance.

A photo gallery from the first day of Governors Ball, featuring Florence and the Machine, MMJ, The Decemberists, St. Vincent and more.

“Jim had a great voice in our early 20s, but it’s crazy to hear how it’s grown over the years,” the bassist says.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band may be the most overanalysed, overexposed album in history. In light of the Flaming Lips' affectionate reimagining, can the inescapable masterpiece ever be surpassed?

PopMatters' picks for the best albums of the 2000s begins with a series of albums that spans epic metal, ornate indie folk, and a terrifying work of electronic music.

Afrobeat's most famous AIDS casualty gets Red Hot honors once again.

Forget everything you thought you felt about John Denver's music and allow yourself to enjoy this expert tribute to a master songwriter.

The My Morning Jacket frontman's first solo album is based on a graphic novel from the 1920s, and it's both as good and as bad as that sounds.

Dust Bowl Blues for the Centennial celebration of Woody Guthrie's birth.

My Morning Jacket rocks the radio and Internet airwaves on July 15th, with a concert recorded in a legendary recording studio.

This tribute collection of 19 covers of one of early rock's most influential pioneers features legends (Paul McCartney, Lou Reed), indie A-listers (Modest Mouse, My Morning Jacket, She & Him), and -- would you believe? -- Kid Rock.

You’re here to see your favorite indie-rock act, and you just so happen to have great representatives from other musical styles to explore as well.

This is a confident, finely crafted collection of songs that feels like a natural, albeit slightly more reflective, extension of Broemel's main gig with My Morning Jacket.

With a recent contract being signed to keep Voodoo in New Orleans through 2019, fans can expect the event to continue to grow and be a fitting close to each year’s music festival season.

On July 23rd, The Bijou Theater was church, and Moore, Sollee, and Yim Yames were preachers, spreading the word of their particular gospel. Still, calling this is a "church service" isn't accurate. This is what a church service should be.

In its 20th year and in the hands of the National's Dessner Brothers, Red Hot delivers another compilation

The communal spirit seems almost sacrosanct to its attendees and artists, some of whom invoke the term 'commune' in the footage on this disc.

Jim James and associates reinvent themselves once again, this time falling somewhere between Quiet Storm soul balladeers and a cummerbund-rocking wedding band.

A music fan puts his love for live music to the test.

If a concert is a give and take communication process between the artist and the audience, each feeding off the other’s energy, then the DC crowd let My Morning Jacket down this time.

Evil Urges sounds like an album that falls well short of its mark, committing itself to a sound that ultimately weakens its songs.

This collection of demos casts the spotlight on singer Jim James where, stripped of his solid band, he shows he can still shine as a songwriter.

If you think Kentucky's transcendental rockers My Morning Jacket are a bit creepy, well, you're right. And wrong.

My Morning Jacket, taking their high-powered live show into your home and setting it ablaze.

With the onset of darkness I was able to write feverishly, picking up on subtleties like 'lots of hair' and 'still dark', jottings that might later be transcribed into something insightful...

2003's stellar It Still Moves sounded like the last word on MMJ's atmospheric Southern rock. But on the follow-up, they prove they have more to say that's worth hearing.

Jim James and co. deliver the first of two volumes chronicling their infancy. A confusing and superfluous listen for the casual fan, The Sandworm Cometh proves a captivating treat for the My Morning Jacket cognoscenti.