The Waterfall II

Album review

Living in Stinson Beach was like “living on our own little moon”. Jim Jones couldn’t have come up with a better description of the little Californian cocoon that his band My Morning Jacket transformed into their HQ. It was there, in their Panoramic House studio, at the top of the mountain, that the Kentucky-born quintet produced two dozen songs. The idea was to make a triple album, though in the end they split the work in two. The first part, The Waterfall, was released in 2015, the second five years later. The decision to dig up The Waterfall II came about by chance in the early days of lockdown. During a walk, Jones was listening to music on shuffle and came across the unreleased Spinning My Wheels, where he explores the feeling of being hypnotized by doing the same old thing. Struck by its relevance, he went back and listened to the other compositions from the Panoramic House sessions and found that they all encouraged self-reflection, making them more relevant during the pandemic than when they were recorded. “As so many of us feel out of tune and long for the world to be a better place,” Jones said, “we have to look to nature and the animals and learn from them: learn to love, accept, move on and respect each other.” The Waterfall II is a mix of rock and roll. From alternative country to soft rock, southern rock, stoner rock, folk and even pop, Jones draws from a wide range of influences, no longer limiting himself to what My Morning Jacket were when they started in 1998 - a kind of Appalachian Beach Boys. As a result, this second volume of The Waterfall is a copious electric feast that is worth listening to several times in order to appreciate all its nuances. © Max Dembo/Qobuz