Twenty years ago, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James joined fellow singer/songwriters M. Ward and Conor Oberst and the latter’s longtime collaborator Mike Mogis for a revue-style tour that found the four musicians quickly developing a rarefied camaraderie. After reconvening a half-decade later—and taking their moniker from a tongue-in-cheek nickname bestowed by the tour’s road crew—the so-called Monsters of Folk set to work on a self-titled debut album that alchemized their distinct sensibilities into 15 idiosyncratic yet strangely timeless songs. Newly reissued by ATO Records with five previously unreleased tracks, Monsters of Folk ultimately finds several of the modern era’s most essential songwriters redefining the context of the supergroup and fully devoting themselves to the singular magic of creating without constraint.

“Making this album brought me back to the same feelings I had when I first started a band, or first started playing music in general—there’s a real simplicity and excitement to playing with folks you don’t normally play with,” says James. “The spirit of play is alive on this whole thing,” Ward continues. “Debut records have a freedom that can’t be matched, because there’s no history to work from. I just hear the four of us following wherever the songs seem to be leading us.”

Mainly produced by Mogis (a producer/engineer/multi-instrumentalist and member of Oberst’s seminal indie-rock band Bright Eyes), Monsters of Folk came to life over a series of sessions at the historic Malibu studio Shangri-La and at Another Recording Company (Mogis’ studio in Omaha). Apart from ruling out the use of outside musicians (and handling all instrumentation on their own), the band embraced a free-flowing process that often hinged on encouraging each other to push into entirely new musical terrain. When matched with each member’s finely honed musicianship, that communal sense of creative abandon led to a lineup of songs that shift from country to pop to psych-rock with equal parts untamed imagination and ineffable ease. And while certain sonic elements endure throughout the album (including the band’s transcendent harmonies), Monsters of Folk endlessly delivers the type of wildly unexpected details that keep the listener wholly enthralled.

Arriving in time for the album’s 15^th anniversary, ATO’s Monsters of Folk reissue features a batch of songs recorded in a later session with Will Johnson of Centro-matic, including the moody folk epic “Museum Guard” and the high-energy heartland-rock anthem “Disappeared.” As Johnson reveals, those five tracks were initially meant to accompany a dystopic sci-fi film based on a screenplay penned by Oberst (a project that was eventually shelved). “That session was very much kept in the moment,” Johnson recalls. “I remember looking over at Jim playing drums on ‘Disappeared,’ joyfully bashing away, and it harbored that same exuberance of starting your first band: that moment in the garage where things take flight, and the energy and happiness just lead you onward.”

Looking back on album’s creation, all of the Monsters describe themselves as indelibly elevated by what Ward refers to his bandmates’ “superpowers.” “It was amazing to have a ringside seat for the way Jim and M make records,” says Oberst. “Jim’s outside-the-box knack for soul and harmony and M’s sense of space and songcraft were so inspiring and invaluable to me then, and continue to be to this day.” “I feel like it really expanded my way of thinking about music, and my thinking in general,” James adds. “It was so special to create with artists that I respect so much—to come into the project from a place of already loving so many of their songs and their outlook on the world, and then feel the whole experience opening me up to life in such a fresh and beautiful way.”