On this second solo album from the leader of My Morning Jacket, Jim James has decided to try something different, but on the whole it doesn\u2019t work as well as his first record, 2013\u2019s amazing Regions Of Light And Sound Of God<\/i>. The latter was one of the best efforts of that year and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that James\u2019 gifts extend beyond his work with MMJ.<\/p>\n
This time around, however on songs like \u201cHide In Plain Sight,\u201d things just aren\u2019t up to par. The song is decent enough but it features a drone-y type dance beat behind it that just doesn\u2019t work, at least not for an artist like James\u2014and that\u2019s a real shame, because he really is capable of so much more. \u201cSame Old Lie\u201d is similar but much stronger because James\u2019 rich vocals really come across here and help to make up for the song\u2019s weaknesses.<\/p>\n
There are plenty of inessentials here including \u201cThe World\u2019s Smiling Now\u201d which comes across as dreadfully dull and doesn\u2019t do jack squat. The instrumental \u201cWe Aren\u2019t Getting Any Younger Pt. 1\u201d kills any momentum this record had, although the song\u2019s second part is much better, in fact one of the better songs here.<\/p>\n
The record\u2019s real standout is \u201cHere In Spirit\u201d which has plenty of great vocals and some really strong instrumentation, a real piece of work from Mr. James. Unfortunately, the same can\u2019t be said for \u201cIn This Moment,\u201d bland, crappy 21st<\/sup> century electro-folk that no one really wants to hear. James is capable of so much more and this just doesn\u2019t cut.<\/p>\n In the end, this is one of the most disappointing discs of the year, and it\u2019s a real shame since James is one of the most stunning lyricists and vocalists of the 21st<\/sup> century. Ultimately, this record feels like a massive step back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":32913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[9045],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-44686","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jim-james","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44686"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44686"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}