Just announced as part of this year’s Arthur’s Day lineup, alongside a gathering of some great musical acts, we met Ireland’s own James Vincent McMorrow ahead of this year’s Guinness celebrations. With a new album on the horizon, as well as his debut album having become a very well respected piece of work, and a Meteor Choice award nomination, 2014 is set to be a bigger year than ever for James.
So, what does it mean to James to be involved in an Irish event such as this one? Being an Irish musician is an interesting experience for James as he travels the world. He has always been struck by the level of curiosity he has received as an Irish musician, before even playing a note. He spoke a little bit about how delighted he is to be involved in the day’s celebrations: “I think considering all they’re doing this year, it’s a genuine pleasure to be part of it. I’m Irish, I have no perspective on anyone else – what it feels like to be British or what it feels like to be French . I think being Irish gives you a unique perspective and a unique access to the world. I travel places and people automatically care, because I’m Irish, and that used to throw me, that we, as a small nation, have created these things. I think it’s ridiculous. Like when does a president go to France and eat a croissant?”
So with such a connection to his nationality, how important is this when James is writing his new works? Is ‘Irishness in music’ something he deliberately attempts to capture? “I don’t think that that’s necessarily the thing, I’m not trying to high-step across the world or make traditional music, though there’s nothing wrong with that. I love the fact that people care that I’m Irish, but I’m not looking to play into that. The best thing that anyone could ever say about me as a musician is that I’m not defined by the fact that I’m Irish. I’m lucky in that I make music in a moment when there’s a lot of people making music, and the greatest thing you can say about them all is that none of them sound like they’re Irish. Like Girl Band are one of my favourite bands. They’re not trying to sound Irish, they just sound brilliant. That’s when great art gets made here – when you just make it.”
With the release of the new album on the horizon, it must be a nervous time for James. His debut album ‘Early In The Morning’ was released to critical acclaim, as well as receiving a meteor choice nomination, so how has this shaped album no.2? Having recorded it in El Paso, Texas, James spoke a bit about the thinking behind his upcoming second album: “I wanted to do something that took it out of its comfort zone, added some sort of sense to it that I couldn’t predict. I wanted to see what would happen when you brought this thing to another place. The one thing I hadn’t done was I hadn’t written any of the lyrics. I’d written the melodies. Lyrics don’t matter as much to me as much guitar matters to me. People ask me in interviews all the time about lyrics, but I don’t care about lyrics any more or less than I care about how the drum sounds. The lyrics are a sound – it’s a vowel, it’s a consonant – and it changes based on how it interacts with everything else, so the idea of committing to these words based on these ideas that aren’t finished?” And did the change in continent result in a different sound, or was this the aim at all with recording in Texas? James digressed on how exactly this change affected the new album: “It wasn’t done in a knowing sense, it was done in a hopeful sense. I was prepared to come home with half a record. I was prepared to come home with ideas, and not the fully formed thing. But I just though maybe this will work, and it did!”
Coming off a successful debut album, is James feeling the pressure for album number two, or has he left the debut album behind? The pressure of a prior choice award nomination isn’t easy to ignore, and people will certainly be waiting for album number two, so what kind of effect did this have on the conception of James’s second album? “I really don’t think about it at all. The first record did so well, but it did so well so quietly that it never really occurred to me what was happening. I mean, I find myself in front of three thousand people in London and I’m like ‘How did this happen? This doesn’t make any sense’, because there wasn’t any catalytic moment. By the time it got there, it gave me a chance to learn a great deal about all this, particularly how people perceive music. I’m not a folk musician. People call me a folk musician because I’ve got a guitar. That to me is incredibly shortsighted. I just did what I wanted with this record because, with the first one, I felt like it was pushed and pulled a bit by the world that it was entering into.This record was an opportunity for me to do something that I wanted to do, that wasn’t pushed or pulled by anything. I like listening to this record!”
For all those looking forward to the release of this new album, they’re going to have to wait a little longer, with release set to be in January of 2014. But by the sounds of excitement from James Vincent McMorrow, it’s going to be well worth waiting for.