Jim James Shares "Wowed Out" Title Track and Video

Jim James has shared “Wowed Out,” the title track and video from his first solo album in eight years. The record, also called Wowed Out, arrives August 28 on ATO Records.

Where his earlier single “Come Again” moved with some urgency, “Wowed Out” pulls back into something closer to prayer. James points to Alice Coltrane’s spiritual recordings as a touchstone, saying he wanted songs that unfold gradually rather than build toward a big chorus or guitar solo. That same restraint carries into the video, built from analog effects and edited by Louisville artist W.G. Rickel, who also worked on the “Come Again” clip.

The album has an unusual back story. James produced it himself, working from a stash of recordings he made years earlier with composer Brian Reitzell for a pair of film scoring projects. The tapes sat unused until last fall, when he returned to them and found a way through. “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.”

That sense of return shapes the album’s themes as well as its origin. James has said the title comes from his own term for the sensory overload of constant notification and stimulation, and the record works against that noise rather than adding to it, favoring stillness over spectacle. Emily Lazar mixed the album, and tracks like “Lost Child” and “Hands On” sit alongside “Baby Dear,” “Home (Green),” “We Love Our Life,” “Whole Heart (Into It),” “Rewind It,” and “Your Door.”

James has spent more than two decades shaping songs outside My Morning Jacket, and Wowed Out continues that pattern of following an idea until it resolves into its own shape rather than forcing it into a familiar one.

James will support the album with headline shows starting November 28 at Louisville’s Kentucky Performing Arts Brown Theatre, with stops in Chicago, New York, Boston, Boulder, and Los Angeles through mid-December. He’ll also play a solo acoustic set at Park City’s Song Summit on August 28, the same day the album is released. Pre-orders and pre-saves are available now.