Ambitious, excitable, funny and ever enigmatic, all Jim James did was fend off my questions about vocal influences, lyrical influences, why darkness and introspection appeal to him, the buffalo cozy, and the muumuu. Arcade Fire. He kinda gets it more than I thought he would. Pitchfork: Since Jim is the only one not joining this little roundtable, tell us one thing we should know about Jim James? We just want to try everything there is to try and we think EPs are the best place to try weird things out. James: No. There's things we probably don't think about that will always be there, but I have no idea what the next record will be like. James: I'm not sure, I don't really listen to it. Broemel: I was the acoustic guitar player. Pitchfork: One of the things I love about MMJ is there seem to be no limitations to what kind of music you'll play. James: Jade Tree approached us, and since they're such a great label, and Jason [Molina] is such an excellent songwriter we thought it would really be a neat way to reach a crowd we normally wouldn't reach. Maybe every release doesn't always have to be cut-and-dry. Yet old crack and lightbulb jokes always get people laughing. At this point, My Morning Jacket was still growing as a band, and they were one album away from their best work, but this is still a fantastic album and excellent introduction to their music. Pitchfork: What are the pleasures of Bill Hicks for MMJ? Z is a great record--more expansive than its predecessors and less tunnel-visioned too. [With] this incarnation of the band, it becomes a totally different thing. Roy Orbison's Best Of. So, we've had a taste of it. One of the main things I learned from him was to stop compartmentalizing things and deconstructing moments and instead just feel them as if we were still children. That's the negative part of southern rock. And it will be mysterious. There is nothing more pure and beautiful than the human voice and oftentimes I just drift away listening to Roy [Orbison, Pitchfork assumes] or Neil [Young, Pitchfork assumes] sing a song, and it doesn't matter really what they're saying or they're playing. We'd have made the three- and four-minute songs six or seven minutes long. Pitchfork: Speaking of Poison, you head one of the few acts in which one hears as much metal as soul. James: Stay off crack. Patrick was the keyboard player 'cause [actor] Paul Schneider was the singer and drummer. My Morning Jacket have announced their first new album in five years. You always know it's My Morning Jacket when you hear the drums start. I always feel like I'm in another time or place when I play this music. I understand that there's a Dutch documentary about MMJ, that you guys have a zealous following over there. Or someone said we were going to start going backwards. I think we're all so sick of hearing about southern rock that we don't even care. There's no rigidity to the way we approach things but we're also not completely out of control. All rights reserved. My Morning Jacket develop their sound further on Z beyond the jammy indie rock sound of It Still Moves, providing one of their best works and a solid middle point between their previous album and the eclectic sound they would explore on Evil Urges. Okkervil River. Crack is so damaging. He's a special person and a gift to this world. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with prior written permission of Condé Nast. We'll work and rework a song. My mom was there too and that meant a lot, because that was a big song for us growing up. Jim James Talks My Morning Jacket's New Album And The Nature That Inspires Him XPN. I told him, "Here's a saxophone part but it's a little bit out of tune." [He adopts a cartoonish drawl]. I ask this as someone who thinks you should be headlining a Monsters of Rock revival. Since none of us can read, books and other forms of printed entertainment are out of the question. Tommy: Yeah, that would be awesome to have a bunch of mini-tours that only lasted one or two weeks where there's always a different background and it's a different experience every time-- having a show tailored to different markets. I thought there were a lot of new corridors opening up in the newer tunes when I saw you in November. Deerhunter. So, you're right there in front of the crowd. Believe in your product. What's the soundtrack in the tour van? That's fun to do, to rejuvenate a song that hasn't been out there in a while. © 2018 Condé Nast. Filter. James: We try to go to movies, but we just enjoy the explosive ones. All the songs are great as just acoustic songs, too. The Genitorturers? James: Yankee is a great album, indeed, though when I'm in the mood for Wilco I always return to Being There. It's not something we can deconstruct or control. I just don't feel any real emotion from some of the more widely accepted artists these days. It's so weird to think about because it's just my life everyday. Every night I tell it this prayer which I learned as a child. The band's sound, rooted in rock and country, is often experimental and psychedelic. Pitchfork spoke to everyone except main man Jim James, who was recovering from severe pneumonia, while the band was on brief respite from their marathon tour schedule. No sense trying to play it cool: I'm the guy who's grabbed you, a little sloshed, after each Florida and D.C. show in the past year, self-nominated as one of your sad ambassadors. At their best, My Morning Jacket, both on LP and in the flesh, make blue-collar music with a celestial bent. Does the band intend to blow through a Spinal Tap-ish number of drummers, or are you settled with new drummer Patrick Hallahan? And he's hilarious. 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