Jim James of My Morning Jacket

Belly Up, San Diego, July 9, 2007

My Morning Jacket has built a large audience for themselves by focusing on the time-tested essentials: write great songs, give inspired performances both on record and live, and use production as an excuse for invention. Behind the band’s evolution is Jim James, lead singer, songwriter, guitar player, and restless creator of MMJ’s strange and individual vision. James writes songs that are driven by melody but refuse to be hemmed in by convention. The moment in which one attempts to classify MMJ by genre is the moment in which the impossibility of such a task becomes obvious. Here’s a group, not unlike The Band, whose music can somehow incorporate anything and everything—there are traces of country, soul, R&B, electronic music, all woven into an aesthetic that remains uniquely that of MMJ. Here’s a band that will be around for a long time, propelled by their own creative drive.