James is hardly alone as an artist writing with a greater sense of political urgency since 2016 while struggling to manifest good intentions as something worth singing. “There’s more to life than just black and white/So many shades in between…and I wish everyone could agree,” he sighs, belaboring a point with which nearly all his listeners likely already agree. If the jarring key change and extended guitar wig-out during the midsection of “In Color” doesn’t feel earned, at least it’s a break from James’ going on for seven minutes about how prejudice and discrimination is actually quite bad. The ProTools cut-and-paste yields some interesting experiments if the chopped-and-screwed coda of “Complex” doesn’t redeem a placeholder chorus in search of a melody or lyric (“Hey, you get what you pay for/Hey, what are you waiting for”), at least it’s novel.

At least in the way that fans of Phish, moe., or String Cheese Incident typically understand their faves’ studio LPs: existing in a netherworld between “songs” and “jams” until achieving actualization in a live setting. Upending their creative process and concentrating hours upon hours of freeform takes into the baggy shape of 11 songs, My Morning Jacket achieves the dubious goal of nailing a “jam band album” on the first try.