James Vincent McMorrow - Early In the Morning

Not since Damien Rice's remarkable O have we heard an Irish debut album that is as visionary in scope, rich in lyrical imagery and powerfully restrained as James Vincent McMorrow's Early In the Morning. Released last February in his home country to critical acclaim ("one of the first truly great albums of the year" crowed The Dubliner), the album was recently put on the short list for Ireland's esteemed Choice Music Prize and will finally see an American release January 25 via Vagrant. Early In the Morning is strictly a D.I.Y. affair, self-recorded in a deserted house near the sea over a five month period and with McMorrow handling all the instruments himself. That natural, isolated surrounding, he says, helped create the dark and haunting backdrop for the album's organic and thematic tales, with McMorrow referring to a "fluid notion", "the washes of melody" and "the ebb and flow" of the songs' shifting tensions.

"I don’t sit down with an agenda when I write," says McMorrow, "I usually have a first line, and a vague sense in my head of where I’m going, but no real solid structure. Music tends to reveal itself to me over the course of weeks and months. It’s probably quite like sculpting, you have a chisel, you know what’s waiting for you inside the stone, all that’s left is to chip away the pieces and reveal it." Album opener "If I Had A Boat" is an eerie tone poem of haunting atmospheres, McMorrow's sandy tenor practically breathing in your ear as the mood and production build slowly. A piano line echoes, a slide guitar soars,  the chorus erupts as if a dark dreamscape is suddenly shaken awake. Brilliantly epic but never self-aggrandizing, Early in the Morning is, quite simply, a stunning achievement.

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James Vincent McMorrow - "If I Had A Boat" (from the album Early in the Morning)

James Vincent McMorrow - "From the Woods" (from the album Early in the Morning)