Jim James has crafted his What’s Going On with Eternally Even–a swirl of socially conscious lyrics and space-soul grooves. Like 2013’s Regions of Light and Sound of God, his first venture away from My Morning Jacket, Even works within a tight musical palette: James croons protest lyrics and peace pleas over droning organ loops (the two-part “We Ain’t Getting Any Younger”) and crusty jazz-fusion basslines (“True Nature”), downplaying Jacket’s widescreen rock heroics. These songs feel intimate in a new way, with James trusting simple lyrical messages to carry the weight. “Guns drawn, faces long, how much killing can be done?” he ponders on the psychedelic, meditative “Same Old Lie,” surveying a violence-rattled America just in time for election season. “It’s the same old lie they tell you when you die,” he continues in an eerie monotone. “There are mansions up in heaven, 50 virgins off in the sky.” Outside of a few stinging guitar riffs, notably the bent-string moan of “Hide in Plain Sight,” Eternally Even hardly resembles My Morning Jacket—its ghostly beats, airy string lines, and fractured samples more obviously echoing his work on Monsters of Folk’s “Dear God.” He hits an emotional peak with the closing title-track, a slow-motion tearjerker that moves from the political to the personal. “I hope you’re having a wonderful life,” he meditates about a former lover, as two massive organ chords cycle back and forth, a majestic seesaw in deep space.