My Morning Jacket Brings in an Outside Producer for Album ‘Is’

“Is,” the latest album by Louisville, KY alt-rock band My Morning Jacket released in March 2025, is the group’s 10^th overall.

As the album’s release notes on Apple Music observe, the album’s sound is largely “more of the same” for the band, which formed in 1998. Rootsy eclecticism, combined with soft-but-chunky ’70s rock and lightly psychedelic insights into the human condition.

But for the first time in the band’s 25-year-plus career, for this album they recruited an outside producer instead of doing that work themselves. Namely Brendan O’Brien, who has previously worked as a producer and mixer for acts including Bruce Springsteen (“The Rising,” “Devils & Dust,” “Magic,” “High Hopes”) and Pearl Jam (nearly their entire discography).

The result was a collective shift in which the band was able to free themselves from the minutiae of record-making and relax into being a band, according to Apple Music. Bandleader Jim James compares this to an athlete connecting with the right coach (even though James himself insists he was “never good at sports”).

Partly as a result of working with O’Brien, however, a lot more demo songs were also written for these sessions than the ten that made it onto the final album—reportedly as many as a hundred. Highlights “Everyday Magic” and “Time Wasted,” for example, were written deep in the recording process, even though they appear early in the track list.

“It was hilarious because when I started working with Brendan, all these songs kept coming out,” James said. “I email him one song. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God. Check this out.’ No response.” Then another, and another. “‘I wonder if he just missed the email.’”

It was only when it seemed like James had reached the end of his efforts that the right songs finally materialized.

“I realized for the first time that I don’t have to take it personally,” James said. “Even when I was trying so hard to micromanage and force everything, at the end of the day, the record makes itself.”