WATCH: James Vincent McMorrow shares ‘Rising Water’ video, Roundhouse date, album details
James Vincent McMorrow premieres ‘Rising Water’ video
Third album – ‘We Move’ – confirmed for September 2, 2016
European headline tour (ft. The Roundhouse, October 17th)
James Vincent McMorrow has premiered the video for new single ‘Rising Water’, taken from forthcoming third album We Move (released via Believe Recordings / Caroline on September 2nd). This follows 2010’s platinum-selling Early In The Morning (number 1 in Ireland), and acclaimed follow-up Post Tropical (nominated for the Choice Music Prize, leading to sold-out worldwide shows spanning two nights at Sydney Opera House to London’s Barbican & Shepherd’s Bush Empire). 2016 has already seen McMorrow surpass 100+ million streams, be sampled on Drake’s Views, collaborate with Kygo, and feature in the quickly-viral trailer for the latest series of Game of Thrones. We Move arrives ahead of a 17 date European tour, including James’ largest London headline to date at The Roundhouse on October 17, 2016.
Describing the video for ‘Rising Water’, James writes: “I didn’t tell David what I wanted to see in this video, I just told him what the song meant to me and why I wrote it. Beyond that he was free to go with whatever instinct he had. The idea he came back with was perfect, it was everything I could have hoped for. To me, he’s made a video about the things we will do in order to move through loss. I’ve said this before, one of the bedrock ideas I built this album on was that dancing and heavy heartedness don’t need to be mutually exclusive things, that the response to sadness doesn’t have to only be slow tempos and minor keys. That’s the video David has made, one that reflects the absurdity, beauty, comedy and tragedy, of life.”
Written in constant transition, the first steps to We Move took place in 2014. Having been asked to write for different artists’ projects, James started sketching out ideas for others on tour (and subsequently stopped over-analysing his own work). Intent on doing the opposite of everything he’d done thus far, McMorrow then came off the road, but kept exploring: through Barcelona, Canada and Los Angeles, where the album crystallised. He returned to Dublin determined not to self-produce again, but to work with people who could articulate the unique world he heard in his head (“I grew up wanting to write songs like Neil Young but produce them like The Neptunes”). James reached out to a few key co-producers he’d met whilst travelling, namely, Nineteen85 (Drake), Two Inch Punch (Years & Years), and Frank Dukes (Kanye West). Mixing took place with one of McMorrow’s all-time heroes, Jimmy Douglass – known for his work from Donny Hathaway through to Timbaland – who finessed the record’s warm, vintage yet forward-thinking feel.
The result is an album about movement – geographically, mentally, emotionally – which remains focused on finding your place in that future. Ultimately it embraces a shared, collective awkwardness, and a sense that maybe we’re all putting on a brave face in some way. Beginning with the sky-scraper sized catharsis of ‘Rising Water’, We Move continues a remarkable journey for the Dubliner, whose early work offered little clue as to the sounds that would follow. It’s a remarkably assured collection, informed by this idea that you might not have to listen to others when they tell you how they think life is supposed to go; and that as you grow up, you lose things along the way. Rather, ‘We Move’ suggests it’s possible to keep what you want to keep, and lose what you want to lose.
WE MOVE
1. Rising Water
2. I Lie Awake Every Night
3. Last Story
4. One Thousand Times
5. Evil
6. Get Low
7. Killer Whales
8. Seek Another
9. Surreal
10. Lost Angles
Pre-order from here: https://jamesvmcmorrow.lnk.to/wemove
TOUR
Oct 10 O2 ABC Glasgow Glasgow, United Kingdom
Oct 11 Albert Hall Manchester, United Kingdom
Oct 12 Colston Hall Bristol, United Kingdom
Oct 13 Leeds Town Hall Leeds, United Kingdom
Oct 15 The Sage Gateshead Gateshead, United Kingdom
Oct 17 The Roundhouse London, United Kingdom
Oct 18 Élysée Montmartre Paris, France
Oct 19 Tivolivredenburg Utrecht, Netherlands
Oct 21 Rockefeller Oslo, Norway
Oct 22 Debaser Medis Stockholm, Sweden
Oct 23 DR Koncerthuset København S, Denmark
Oct 24 Heimathafen Berlin, Germany
Oct 26 Mojo Hamburg, Germany
Oct 27 New Fall Festival Dusseldorf, Germany
Oct 29 BIME Bilbao, Spain
Oct 30 Joy Eslava Madrid, Spain
Oct 31 BARTS Barcelona, Spain
WATCH the ‘Rising Water’ video