Jim James has announced Wowed Out, his first solo album in eight years. Previewing the album, James has released its first single “Come Again.” Stream it below.
Wowed Out is set for release August 28th on ATO Records. To create the songs on the album, the My Morning Jacket frontman transformed an archive of music he had written for two films in the early 2010s with award-winning composer Brian Reitzell, known for Sofia Coppola film compositions, into “an audacious, immersive new work of soulful psychedelia,” a press release said. James produced the record himself and mixed it with Grammy-winning engineer Emily Lazar, who has worked with David Bowie, David Byrne, and Beck. The new album is James’ fifth solo release.
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“For years I kept returning to all this music we’d made and couldn’t figure out what to do with it,” James said. “But for some reason, last year everything started flowing in a really beautiful way.”
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“Come Again” was composed for a scene set in a teddy bear factory and evolved into a vocally rich piano-and-drums “meditation on resilience in the face of chaotic instability.” The quickly-sequenced notes and big chords of the intro are reminiscent of The Who’s “Baba O’Reily.” “Start from nothing/ And you build it up/ Just to watch it burn/ But I knew you’d come again,” James sings at the beginning of the uplifting arrangement.
Wowed Out will be James’ second release of the year with My Morning Jacket putting out the anti-ICE benefit album Peacelands, filled with acoustic editions of a number of the Kentucky bands’ tracks, solo tunes, and covers of protest songs. James’ last solo release was 2018’s Uniform Distortion and its companion Uniform Clarity. He also put out a 2019 collaborative record The Order of Nature with Teddy Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra.
Along with the album announcement, James also revealed he’ll be part of the Music from the Films of Wes Anderson concert on July 11th, 12th, and 13th at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Beck, Jackson Browne, Bill Murray, Britt Daniel and more will also perform. James will also be playing August 28th at The Marquis on Main Street in Park City, Utah as part of Song Summit 2026.
My Morning Jacket are doing a couple festival dates this summer before a residency at The Fillmore in San Francisco this fall. Fans can look for tickets here.
Wowed Out tracklist:
01. Baby Dear
02. Hands On
03. Come Again
04. Lost Child
05. Home (Green)
06. We Love Our Life
07. Wowed Out
08. Whole Heart (Into It)
09. Rewind It
10. Your Door