James Vincent McMorrow – Early In the Morning (2010)

A few years ago when I had moved to London, I got Barbican membership for one year as a birthday present from my wife. This included many benefits, such as free admission to the art gallery, cheaper movie tickets and a possibility to book tickets for gigs ahead of rest of the public. I love Barbican in any case because of the amazing space-age surroundings and the gigs in Barbican have amazing acoustics, but this membership made me book tickets for shows even more easily than normally. I had never heard of James Vincent McMorrow, but when his upcoming gig was introduced in my membership email, the description felt good and I checked him out. He was playing melancholic and airy folk music that I liked a lot, so I bought the tickets to go and see him. The gig was really good and it introduced me to yet another great new folk artist.



Now, the problem with many artists like McMorrow in recent years has been that after they get some fame with their organic folk music, they get sucked into big record companies and as a result the sound they became known for changes, and almost always, it changes to worse. Early In the Morning is McMorrow's debut album and I really like it. The sounds are fairly similar to artists such as Bon Iver, but there are some folkier aspects there that draw up comparisons to bands such as Mumford & Sons or Fleet Foxes. Early In the Morning was such a strong debut album that I was expecting big things from McMorrow. But the second album that was being released along the gig I went to see turned out to be quite a big disappointment. The organic acoustic sounds had been switched into plastic and commercial electronic instruments. This is really sad and it seems to happen almost every time when a big record company takes a wonderful musician early in their career and moulds them into something commercial and soulless.

The album starts with beautiful a-capella vocal harmonies in the song If I Had a Boat. The song has some eerie country western influences and echoey vocals that show what an incredible range McMorrow has in his voice. Hear the Noise That Moves So Soft and Low is a more traditional acoustic folk song with some excellent banjo picking. The vocals are so high and pure in this song. Sparrow and the Wolf is a more upbeat folk song with excellent rolling groove. The melodies are catchy and happy. The next song, Breaking Hearts, on the other hand is one of the most melancholic songs on the album. That's probably why I like it so much. The melody is absolutely beautiful. We Don't Eat is probably the only song on the album that kind of predicts what's in store from McMorrow on his later albums. This song is mostly played on pianos and the production is closer to commercial hit songs than the rest of the largely earthy folk songs on the album. This Old Dark Machine has a wonderful dark melody and it shows also the lower tones in McMorrow's vocals. The singing is particularly impressive in this song as a result, because the range is quite massive. Follow You Down to the Red Oak Tree has a slow and ominous melody that creeps slowly under your skin and lifts the hair up. The vocal harmonies are amazingly beautiful. Down the Burning Ropes grows beautifully bigger and bigger throughout the song. When the climaxes hit, it's quite a bliss. From the Woods is a very different kind of song, but it has the same style of drama between the quiet and loud parts. The fast-paced ending is very impressive. And If My Heart Should Somehow Stop is a slow acoustic song with vocals that are a bit too commercial for my taste. The album ends with very stripped down banjo-driven song Early In the Morning, I'll Come Calling.

It's always fun watching music videos from the debut albums. They are often quite low budget, which means that it's interesting to see how innovative they can be with not a lot of money. The music video for We Don't Eat is one of these videos. The first part of the video just shows some reflections of McMorrow singing the song and some images of the city in the night, such as street lamps and cars. In the latter parts we start seeing McMorrow more clearly. There's not much of a storyline in the video but it does create a certain type of mood.

I feel like Vincent McMorrow could've had a great career in music, had he met the right people to help him with his production, but as it happened, he was sucked into commercial record company business and as a result his career is not very interesting anymore. His first two albums have remained his most well-known ones. It's very sad that those big record companies seem not to be capable in seeing potential in being different and unique. They want to use the fashionable tricks of the day to all of their artists and not find something that could potentially become the new thing in the future. In my opinion, artists should continue with the kind of sound that made them famous in the first place, rather than changing their sound into something that the music world is already full of.

Listen to the album on Spotify.