IN REVIEW: My Morning Jacket - "The Waterfall II"
You can tell a lot about a band from the quality of the music that they release, obviously; it's another thing entirely, though, to take into consideration the quality of the music that they don't. In my mind, some bands separate themselves from the herd based on B-sides and outtakes that match and even sometimes surpass the material on their studio albums. The case of My Morning Jacket sort of fits the narrative, but not really; they don't have a ton of unreleased content (at least, not that I'm aware of) but the sessions for their 2015 album The Waterfall were fruitful enough to leave them with a fair amount of unused songs. That's the setup for The Waterfall II , not a sequel but an addendum, an album-length experience pieced together from that unused music, released five years after the original's release. These songs don't always rival the ones that made the first album's release, but there is a lot of charm and chill contained here, and also a ha...