My Morning Jacket’s Jim James has announced the release of his new album, Wowed Out, which is due out on 28th August via ATO Records. The 3x GRAMMY® Award-nominated singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and founding member of MMJ’s first solo recording in eight years, the album sees him transforming a vast archive of music originally composed for two major film-scoring projects in the early 2010s into a new work. The first single, Come Again, is out now, and you can check out the video below this article.
“‘Come Again’ came from feeling discouraged by how much things are changing in directions I don’t agree with, but trying to remember that there’s still so much beauty to be experienced,” says James. “You’ve got to just keep going and keep trying again and again and again to find joy.”
Wowed Out takes its title from James’ self-coined term for the sensory overload he’s experienced in an age of chronic overstimulation, and it finds James searching for another kind of wonder. The fifth solo LP from the Kentucky-based singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist is produced entirely by James himself, taking shape in the autumn of 2025 as he began sorting through a stash of recordings he’d created with his longtime friend, award-winning composer Brian Reitzell (known for his extensive work with Sofia Coppola, including such films as Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides, and more).
“For years I kept returning to all this music we’d made and couldn’t figure out what to do with it,” James says. “But for some reason, last year everything started flowing in a really beautiful way.”
The album ultimately served as something of a dream project for a musician long infatuated with lost musical artefacts and sample-based experimentation. Mixed by James in collaboration with GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer Emily Lazar (David Bowie, David Byrne, Beck), it purports to offer a radically sincere statement against disillusionment, one that argues for tenderness as resistance, nature as refuge, and awe as a counterforce to dread and despair.
“There’ve been times in my life where I’ve felt lost or depressed, but music has always been the thing that pulls me back,” James says. “When I think about making this album, it almost feels like I was in some kind of dream and now I’m trying to remember what the dream was about. The whole thing brought me a lot of joy and comfort while I was making it, and I hope it brings everyone else a little joy and comfort too.”
For more than 25 years, James has remained steadfast in both his avowed commitment to musical adventure and his deeply humanist search for wonder in a modern world seemingly wired for constant astonishment.
“We’re surrounded by all this technology that’s supposed to be so world-changing and amazing, but a lot of the time it just leaves people feeling disconnected,” he says. “I really believe there’s another path through all this insanity, and it starts with putting down our phones, taking care of ourselves, and being kind to other people. We need to be wowed by what’s actually real, like nature and love and music – these things that almost everyone has access to, and that still have the power to truly move us.”
“Wowed Out” Tracklisting:
1. Baby Dear
2. Hands On
3. Come Again
4. Lost Child
5. Home (Green)
6. We Love Our Life
7. Wowed Out
8. Whole Heart (Into It)
9. Rewind It
10. Your Door
