My Morning Jacket are expanding their summer and fall North American tour with five new shows featuring a complete performance of their 2005 album Z, in honor of the latter’s 20th anniversary. The dates will be tacked onto previously announced stands in Denver (Aug. 15), Los Angeles (Aug. 19), Brooklyn, N.Y. (Oct. 16), Chicago (Oct. 26) and Atlanta (Nov. 1).
“Oct. 4 is the 20th anniversary of our album Z. It’s pretty wild to think about that,” frontman Jim James says. “To celebrate two decades of it being out in the ether, we’re excited to be turning five of our shows into special Z anniversary shows, where we’ll play that album (and some other songs, don’t worry) front to back.”
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The Louisville, Ky.-reared band’s fourth full-length, Z marked the first studio contributions from guitarist Carl Broemel and keyboardist Bo Koster, who joined as touring members the prior year. After three albums of reverb-drenched Southern rock and folk, MMJ took a giant artistic long-jump forward with Z, 10 tracks of experimental psychedelia mostly devoid of their former alt-country sound and often referred to as America’s reply to Radiohead’s OK Computer.
Thanks to favorite such as the burbling opener “Wordless Chorus,” the soaring “Gideon” and the rockers “Anytime” and “Lay Low,” the album greatly expanded My Morning Jacket’s fanbase, reaching a career-best No. 67 on the Billboard 200.
“It’s fun to imagine that My Morning Jacket’s Jim James composes his songs by wailing into an abandoned railroad tunnel, his beard moist with sweat, his corduroy sport coat flapping rakishly in the updraft,” SPIN wrote in its contemporary review. “Z imagines a dance floor covered in sawdust and a musty smell wafting from under the boards. For every moment of ambient weirdness, there’s a blast of rock guitar that reminds you that the listener isn’t required to do all the work. Somewhere between their love of the blues and their affection for the dark disco of ‘Blue Monday,’ James and friends manage to make ambitious music seem like fun.”
Beginning Aug. 5 in Bend, Or., My Morning Jacket will hit the road in support of their latest LP, is, which was produced by Brendan O’Brien (Pearl Jam, Soundgarden). One song from it, “Half a Lifetime,” dates all the way back to the Z era. “It’s a song we had completely forgotten about because we never made a rough mix of it at the time,” James told SPIN earlier this year. “I was digging through old hard drives and found it; Brendan ended up liking it and picking it.”
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