Z

My Morning Jacket expanded their sound on Z, bringing John Leckie into the production and giving keyboards and rhythmic experiments more space. Jim James's reverberant voice remains recognisable, but the arrangements move beyond the long, roots-rock forms of the band's earlier records.

“Wordless Chorus” opens with a bass pulse and layers of voices, while “Off the Record” makes room for a looser, dub-influenced passage. “Dondante” stretches out at the end. Those different shapes make the album feel compact in its writing but willing to wander inside individual songs.