My Morning Jacket’s Jim James To Release Debut Solo Album

Jim James announced today that his debut solo album Regions of Light and Sound of God will be released February 5 on ATO Records. The My Morning Jacket frontman cited the 1929 wood-cut graphic novel God’s Manas inspiration for both the album material and title. To tide fans over until the release date next year, James is providing streaming and free downloads on his website of the song “Know Til Now,” one of the nine songs off the upcoming record.

“I’m very lucky to play in a band with guys that I love, who are great at what they do,” explains James in a statement, “so on MMJ records, I don’t have a need to play bass or keys or what have you. But as a person and as a musician, I love to play every instrument under the sun, and I wanted to make a record where I played all the instruments and produced/engineered it myself.”

“I wanted the album to sound like it came from a different place in time. Perhaps sounding as if it were the past of the future, if that makes any sense—like a hazy dream that a fully-realized android or humanoid capable of thought might have when it reminisces about the good old days of just being a simple robot.”

James has participated in a number of projects outside of the My Morning Jacket banner. In 2009, he released a record with Monsters of Folk with members Conor Oberst, M. Ward, and Mike Mogis, and in 2012 he teamed with Will Johnson and Jay Farrar for the Woody Guthrie project New Multitudes. James also released Tribute To, an EP of George Harrison covers, under the name Yim Yames.