My Morning Jacket The Waterfall II LP (Clear Vinyl)

TAS Rated 4.5/5 Music, 4/5 Sonics in the December 2020 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Back in 2014, the members of My Morning Jacket spent time up in Stinson Beach, a tiny Northern California town set right on the ocean and near the majestic Muir Woods. Massively inspired by their idyllic surroundings, the Kentucky-bred five-piece ended up creating over two dozen songs at the mountaintop studio known as Panoramic House. Though they flirted with the idea of putting out a triple album, the band ultimately decided that less would be more and divided the project into two halves, releasing the first segment as The Waterfall: a 2015 full-length that earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Alternative Music Album. My Morning Jacket are now set to share the second half of the project as The Waterfall II, an unforeseen and timely continuation of a psychic and sonic journey begun long ago.

The mostly bright, fragile production palette could knock the entire Kentucky-fried band over with a fig leaf, but it's the exact right comfort bed for ten tracks delineating unsettled, and unsettling, tension.... The Waterfall II amply shows how MMJ continue to know how to grow with the flow.