Deeply philosophical, humble, adept, and creatively nimble, Jim James is equal parts mystic and mad scientist. As close as we can get to a psychedelic prophet these days, he’s like an artist from a bygone era, in his wide-brimmed hats and sharply tailored dark preacher’s coats, dressed like someone just as ready to play a festival as to lead a séance. Looking at the cover of My Morning Jacket’s 10th album, is, I’d say the latter. With a cosmic sensibility plumbed from the ’60s, he’s a bit like Donovan during his “happiness runs in a circular motion” phase and looks unnervingly like the late Garth Hudson around the time Dylan got his hands on the Hawks and turned them into the Band. But there’s a gentleness, a stillness, in the music he crafts both in his solo work and in My Morning Jacket—although, according to the musician, it’s something that has eluded him personally.