Songwriting at its absolute best; Music.

Byline: With MAEVE QUIGLEY, DEMELZA de BURCA & JAMES WARD

In the last six years, James Vincent McMorrow has released three records, each showcasing his talent in vastly different styles.

The first, the platinum-selling Early In the Morning, earmarked the Dubliner as one of the most exciting Irish talents in a generation. But, as he later discovered, it left him bound to the folk genre, when the reality of the record was a young singer-songwriter discovering his craft.

His sophomore effort, the lush and electronica driven Post Tropical was a reaction against that labelling. But on his third and most accomplished album to date, McMorrow has ditched any and all expectations.

He told the Beat: "Making this record wasn't about trying to follow a genre or create anything. My experience with music is people are going to tell you what they're going to tell you.

"Someone showed me something recently, where someone was talking about this new record. It was some f***ing press thing somewhere. Someone called me a folk singer. I was like 'Yeaaaah.' I mean, you've gotta really want that.

"Even within the first record... I used to always think if you listen to songs like We Don't Eat and If I Had A Boat and tell me that they're folk songs, I'd be really surprised. Like if a true blue folkie was to call them that, I'd be pretty surprised. "I've never ascribed to particular meanings or particular ideas about songs. Or what they are or what they mean from a cultural perspective or a labelling perspective.

"How people talk about music tends to be something you can't control anyway. So I just didn't try to control it anymore. "I wasn't like 'This is what you're gonna see, this is the vision.' It was just like 'Let's make the best most interesting things that we can.'"

For his new record, We Move, James delved deep into the world of hip-hop - the music that guided his formative years. Teaming up with a trio of shit-hot producers - Nineteen85 (Drake, DVSN), Two Inch Punch (Sam Smith, Years & Years), and Frank Dukes (Kanye West, Rihanna), McMorrow sounds more comfortable and confident than ever before.

It's a world that is completely foreign to Irish artists, but one which he inhabits beautifully. Deciding to open himself up to the idea of working with other artists for the first time, he was approached by Nineteen85 - who was soon about to blow up himself after helming Drake's all conquering Views (an album McMorrow makes an appearance on).

"We just clicked and he put his hand up when I said I was talking to a couple of people about making the record. "I was like 'I need help. I need someone that can get me out of my own way, and keep me out of my own way.' He was just like 'I can do it. I'll do it.'" He added: "He gave me his time and his energy for nothing really. This is a guy who has had the two biggest songs in the world in the last year and a half.

"And it wasn't a money thing. It was just like 'Let's do this', because he believed in it. I played him the songs and he said 'I want to be part of this.'You don't get that often.

"I've had people in that world before. I've met people that wanna remix songs, then they'll come back and say 'I want 10 grand to remix this.' It's like 'That's crazy. You're not in a position to ask for that.'

The result is an astonishing album. If there's a finer song than Get Low released this year, it will be very special indeed.

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Title Annotation:	Features
Publication:	The Mirror (London, England)
Date:	Nov 25, 2016
Words:	624
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