We Should Learn To Love, Respect, And Accept: My Morning Jacket Releases The Waterfall II

[Cover photo credit to Danny Clinch]

My Morning Jacket are moving quickly in getting new music out to fans. Earlier last week, they hinted that a new album was on the way with The Waterfall II, and now they've released it digitally ahead of physical media, which will be arriving in late August.

The album was "massively inspired by the band’s idyllic surroundings in Stinson Beach, CA", according to the band. It turns out that in the past, they created over 24 songs at a mountaintop studio and even thought about releasing a triple album, but the result has been The Waterfall, previously released, and now The Waterfall II.

Pre-orders for The Waterfall II, including both standard and deluxe versions featuring 180-gram vinyl with Zoetrope labels in a gatefold foil jacket, are available now.

The band has released the song "Feel You" with a video.

Frontman Jim James says that the decision to make this release happened early in the quarantine period when he was listening to music on shuffle while out walking and came upon their recording of “Spinning My Wheels".

Struck by the song’s relevance, he looked again at the other unreleased tracks reserved from those sessions and appreciated their aspects of "self-reflection".

James says that The Waterfall II is informed by heartbreak including "the demise of a monumental relationship". The album, in the end, is about "loss and recovery", and conveys the message that “there is hope beyond the pain and loss, if you learn to flow with life like water.”

The band says:

“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. 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.”

Keep a look out for My Morning Jacket when they perform on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday July 15.