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3x GRAMMY® Award-nominated singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and founding member of My Morning Jacket Jim James’ fifth solo album, Wowed Out, is out now.
Produced entirely by James, Wowed Out is his first solo recording in eight years and took shape in the fall of 2025 as he began sorting through a stash of recordings originally created for two major film-scoring projects in the early 2010s alongside 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). The Kentucky-based singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist has now transformed this vast archive of music into an audacious, immersive new work of soulful psychedelia.
“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.”
STREAM/PURCHASE WOWED OUT
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PRAISE FOR WOWED OUT:
“The My Morning Jacket frontman sounds graceful and unburdened on his latest solo album.
It’s his strongest work in a decade…the album reveals itself as a quiet, poignant revitalization
for one of our era’s most enduring, idiosyncratic rock artists.”
– PITCHFORK
"His latest solo venture, Wowed Out, was born from an era of profound collective disorientation,
abandoning traditional rock architecture for something entirely more radiant and untethered.
It’s a record that demands you turn off your phone, close your eyes, and surrender to its meditative sounds. "
– FLOOD
"Whatever cinematic worlds these songs were meant for was apparently much chiller than our own — or James' band's, for that matter — as they're a calming force in a world of noise.
The psychedelic swirls of the shapeshifting sonics stay peaceful even at their most playful, and James' lyrics read like they're written by a soul still questing for peace,
but convinced it's within reach."
– CONSEQUENCE (BEST ALBUMS OF AUGUST 2026)
“Wowed Out proves James’ incredible range, leaving the listener in a sense of awe.”
– UNDER THE RADAR
"Self-produced, the layered effort holds together even as the recordings arrive from different sessions and missions. Wowed Out’s modern sense of confusion,
while floating through the present’s technological silos, works well."
– GLIDE
“James’ fifth solo album stresses the need to change perspective, change emphasis, move from a state of burnout to one of joy... As a rescue operation on his archives, Wowed Out is a triumph, but James,
in his wisdom, might just be out to save your sanity, too.”
– MOJO (4 STARS)
“Wowed Out is an astral soundscape that flows with quicksilver viscosity as James leans into savoring the natural world in response to the overstimulated state of present-day reality.”
– UNCUT
“Wowed Out is a breath of spacey fresh air…
Packed with hooks and sonic goodies, he’s got your late Summer covered.”
– SHINDIG (5 STARS)
“Beautiful...The mellow results are flushed with warmth and lovingly unhurried..
James’ invitation to roll with it proves mighty irresistible.”
– RECORD COLLECTOR (4 STARS)
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Wowed Out ultimately served as something of a dream project for a musician long infatuated with lost musical artifacts and sample-based experimentation. The album sets its existential musing against a gorgeously transportive sonic backdrop, steadily sinking into the subconscious through its shapeshifting texture and ethereal atmosphere. Mixed by James in collaboration with GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer Emily Lazar (David Bowie, David Byrne, Beck), songs like “Lost Child” and the radiant folk-rock reverie, “Hands On,” 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. In the end, Wowed Out unfolds as a fully realized world rather than a collection of moments, its revelatory enchantment affirming the restorative power of truly awakened attention.
“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.”
Taking its title from James’ self-coined term for the sensory overload he’s experienced in an age of chronic overstimulation, Wowed Out includes such gorgeously transportive standouts as the enthralling title track, “Wowed Out,” and the acclaimed first single, “Come Again,” the latter praised by Rolling Stone as “a marching, characteristically psychedelic meditation on finding beauty in a chaotic world” and joined by official music video, conceived and edited with analog videographic illusions by Louisville-based multimedia artist, musician, and conceptual engineer W.G. Rickel. The album also features the most recently released single, “Lost Child.” With its soul-easing harmonies and luminous guitar work, “Lost Child” brings a lovely effervescence to James’ reflection on trying to stay open-hearted in a profoundly fractured world. One of the first songs written for the new solo album, Wowed Out, and the only track to originate from outside the album’s archival framework, “Lost Child” also features a transcendentally soulful official music video streaming now on YouTube, directed by Alabama-born, Nashville-based filmmaker Joshua Shoemaker.
WATCH “LOST CHILD” OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
WATCH “WOWED OUT” OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
WATCH “COME AGAIN” OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
James will mark the arrival of Wowed Out with a number of solo acoustic headline concerts beginning November 28 at the Kentucky Performing Arts’ Brown Theatre in his hometown of Louisville, KY. Special guests include Grace Rogers (November 28, December 1), Ken Pomeroy (December 3, 6), Lauren Frihauf (December 8), and Jenny O. (December 11). James will also be among the stars performing at the 5th annual Moon Crush “Pink Moon” music festival, set for Miramar Beach, FL’s Seascape Resort on Sunday, April 25, 2027. In the meantime, James is also set for a solo acoustic headline performance at Park City, UT’s annual Song Summit on August 28. For complete details and ticket information, please visit www.jimjames.com/events.
JIM JAMES – LIVE 2026-2027
NOVEMBER
28 – Louisville, KY – Kentucky Performing Arts Brown Theatre
DECEMBER
1 – Chicago, IL – The Vic Theatre (SOLD OUT)
3 – New York, NY – The Town Hall (SOLD OUT)
6 – Boston, MA – Wilbur Theatre
8 – Boulder, CO – Boulder Theater (SOLD OUT)
11 – Glendale, CA – Glendale Presbyterian Church
APRIL 2027
25- Miramar Beach, FL – Moon Crush “Pink Moon” †
† Festival Appearance
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For more than 25 years, Jim James has proven himself among the most adventurous artists in 21st-century rock music. The Louisville, KY-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist has captained My Morning Jacket through seismic transformations and restless explorations as they grew from misfits to one of the most acclaimed and beloved bands of their generation. At the same time, James has crafted an ancillary catalog of his own, including such inventive solo efforts as 2013’s Regions Of Light And Sound Of God, 2016’s Eternally Even, 2017’s Tribute To 2, 2018’s Uniform Distortion (and its companion Uniform Clarity), and his 2019 collaboration with Teddy Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra, The Order Of Nature.
James has further established himself as a producer, helming records by Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Dean Wareham, Basia Bulat, Eggy, and Ray Lamontagne’s Ouroboros. The seemingly indefatigable artist has also found time to join forces with fellow artists on a number of unique collaborative projects, including 2009’s Monsters of Folk, 2012’s New Multitudes, and 2014’s Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes. James’ ever-evolving list of credits also includes lending his voice to albums by The Roots, David Lynch Foundation, Brandi Carlile, M. Ward, Dr. Dog, and John Fogerty; appearing in director Todd Haynes’s 2007 Bob Dylan-inspired film, I’m Not There; and a 2016 alliance with NASA for the launch of their Mission Juno exploring the planet Jupiter. Now, with the luminous Wowed Out, Jim James remains steadfast in both his avowed commitment to shapeshifting musical adventure and his deeply humanist search for wonder in a modern world 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,” Jim James says. “I really believe there’s another path through all this insanity, and it starts with putting down our phones, taking care of ourselves, 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.”
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JIM JAMES
WOWED OUT
(ATO Records)
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