Jim James of My Morning Jacket drops solo debut

When I went to the much celebrated Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island back in 2008, I had heard plenty of My Morning Jacket, but they hadn’t totally grabbed me yet. I had started to get into the band’s then recent release Evil Urges in the weeks leading up to the festival, but with a perennially stacked lineup of performers, I casually overlooked their frontman Jim James performing a solo set as a compelling point of interest on the schedule. While shuttling through dense human traffic between performances on different stages, I heard music begin playing nearby on a smaller stage that the main pedestrian thoroughfare passed. In the next thirty seconds or so it became clear that something strange was happening there, and the crowd, moving previously like white water rapids, slowed to a mountain creek trickle and then froze solid.

I was somewhat annoyed, having been in a big rush to see whatever was waiting at the next stage (the identity of that artist has been lost to history). Having been stopped dead in our tracks, there was little hope of ignoring the music being made 150 feet away. At a folk festival, especially Newport five years ago, it’s rare to hear anything other than amplified but otherwise unadorned stringed instruments and maybe some basic percussion or harmonica, certainly no reverb or distortion, or phasers, chorus, delay or wah wah trinkets. What the crowd saw and heard here was a seemingly unremarkable shaggy red-bearded fellow in a suit, utterly alone on stage and poking away at what looked like some kind of video game, producing what sounded to me like a looped sample from the soundtrack to the underground bonus levels of Super Mario Brothers. And he was way into it. I was intrigued. These sounds were really different, strange for any setting, but mostly unheard of for a folk festival. What was even weirder though, was how people became almost instantly entranced, in a way that I have never seen before or since.

Every person within earshot, men, women and children ages 8 to 80, grew absolutely rapt, craning their necks to see where this otherworldly sound was coming from (a Suzuki Omnichord, an electronic instrument made in the ’80s, I later found out). And then he started singing, just bulldozing these soaring falsetto lyrics over the Omnichord like Kermit the Frog possessed, wailing with 1000% conviction about celebrating something with every one of us, although the song seemed directed more at the cloudless summer sky than at anyone in the audience. He finished that first song by picking up an acoustic guitar while the Omnichord droned on, and cut the power as he seamlessly launched into a new song called Sec Walkin’ without pause. I am grateful to whoever captured those few minutes for posterity and posted it here.

The entire festival stood and stared, barely swaying in time, half grinning and starry eyed, like we were at a cult gathering and everyone had drunk the kool aid. That was when I realized there was something truly special about Jim James. An hour later, I was officially converted. I hadn’t left the exact spot where I had stopped in haste earlier until ten minutes after his set was over and I was sadly sure he wasn’t coming back.

Now, after five years of waiting, Jim James is finally letting the compelling solo entertainer I saw that day out of the bag, commercially at least. On his new album Regions of Light and Sound of God, he basks in the freedom of being able to do anything he wants, which turns out to be exactly what he has been doing all along, albeit without any expectations from longtime fans of his popular and eclectic arena rock band. Along with this comes his singular ability to imagine, create and perform completely unorthodox and alarmingly entertaining pieces of music that are as purely unique to him as any songwriter in the world. As good as his band is, this album proves that he doesn’t really need much more than his raw talent and some time in the studio to turn out huge, cinematic, fully realized songs.

The album is not a huge departure from James’ work with My Morning Jacket, it merely reinforces the fact that MMJ has always been more or less a product of James’ independent songwriting and vision, and that the balance of the band, as talented as they are, are really just his touring support system. James plays all the instruments on this album, which was recorded at his home studio during breaks from touring over the last year and a half. The album was inspired chiefly by a 1929 graphic novel called “God’s Man” by Lynd Ward, in which James saw many story lines that paralleled his own state of mind at the time.

It starts out with “State of The Art (AEIOU),” a snapshot about modern technology with a minor key groove worthy of Bill Withers at his best. Next up, we get a taste of the more electronic side of James, on a dancey and hypnotic track called “Know Til’ Now,” which has some delightfully tacky early 90’s synthesizer gloss. “All is Forgiven” has a funky loping reggae vibe that will feel familiar to anyone who has seen MMJ live. The first single and a definite high point of the album is called “A New Lif”e, which finds James ruminating over a hopeful, shimmering bit of new nostalgia about the possibilities of personal reinvention. It builds exponentially from acoustic guitar and hushed vocals to full on 60’s pop/gospel/Phil Spector “wall of sound” freakout in only four and a half minutes. James seems here to have started a supergroup with the musical spirits of George Harrison, Patsy Cline and the Everly Brothers and hustled them into the studio to cut a track.

Though it’s not really anything new for those who have followed James’ work with My Morning Jacket, side projects like Monsters of Folk and New Multitudes, or his vaunted solo performances, the results are every bit as gloriously all over the place as expected. One of the things James has proven time and time again over the years is that regardless of what he’s trying to pull off, whether it’s a folk ballad, a soulful screamer, a mid-tempo reggae dance jam, or an early 70’s prog country love song, he always delivers, and it never sounds anything less than 100 percent authentic and natural. James’ true talent lies in making relatively alien sounds seem like home, turning the foreign and unwelcoming into something warm, familiar and comfortable.

Regions of Light and Sound of God by Jim James, available in stores and on iTunes February 5th.