James Vincent McMorrow: "I grew up with this pretty profound love of The Neptunes and Pharrell..."

McMorrow’s new record can be seen as a refinement of the last two records, and is most certainly showing the artist at the top of his game. Working with Drake and OVO producers Nineteen85 and Frank Dukes has enabled McMorrow to craft the delicate artwork that he says has altered the way he will forever think about his work.

Best Fit caught up with McMorrow ahead of his tour.

How does We Move make you feel? How did it feel to make?

It feels good to make things you believe in, so that felt really good. The thing about this record is that I worked with a lot of people. That was a really nice feeling because it freed me up to do the things that I wanna do, not the things that I’m forced to do like mixing records. So having other people involved was an enjoyable experience for me.

This album seems quite different to sounds from your previous releases.

I think it’s just a refinement of the thing I’ve done over the three records. If you listen to - especially the second record - there’s the marker of where it was headed. I think the record was leading into that sound and leading into that idea. It’s a record I’ve always threatened to make but never really did. That’s definitely an appropriate response but I think once you’ve listened to the album and you’ve listened to them altogether then it’s what has been coming for two records, well in my mind anyway.

Do you intend for your listeners to go on a journey with you and your music?

Yeah I think so. I don’t think any record that I ever listen to that I love is particularly easy to listen to. It’s not that it should be difficult to hear, but there should be a certain amount of ebb and flow in a record and there should be a certain amount of push and pull. I base everything from my own experiences and my favourite records are always ones that I have to listen to again, and some records I love so much that I need to listen to them again, but either way there’s a compulsion on whoever has been making that record and they get you to come back.

You speak a lot about growing as a person with your music. How has We Move helped you grow?

Making this record put me in a lot of social situations that I would never have been incredibly comfortable with as a human being... it made me evaluate myself a little bit more. It was like a social experiment, which wasn’t really my intention, but I wanted to do things that would make me uncomfortable which was interesting for me. I’ve learnt that change is good, it’s easy to just be comfortable and do the thing that you did before, although from my experience nothing good is really sustained through that kind of thinking. That’s just my own personal opinion, but the thing that has done the best for me has always been the hardest. I know in myself that if I’m gonna get to the place I need to be then I need to put myself in some situations that I don’t necessarily want to be in.

Is that where the album title has come from?

Yeah definitely. I hate the idea of concept records, I think it’s glum making a record tied around a theme, but to a degree this record did have an overriding... it wasn’t even that I wrote it down on a piece of paper and was like 'yeah, cool', I just happened to be travelling and moving a lot, and at the same time writing a lot of songs about my interactions and the life that I have and the life that I’ve had for the last four/five years and how I feel about it. The idea of growing and changing - it all seemed to just fit into this one idea of movement.

Who have been your main influences through the production of the record?

I grew up with this pretty profound love of The Neptunes and Pharrell Williams and the idea of minimalism is something that I’ve been chasing for a while, and I know that the other guys were too. Pharrell is definitely the guy for me in terms of my guiding light whenever I think 'well, what do I wanna do now?', or think about whether I’m doing too much.

My influences have always really stayed the same, they’ve never changed over the years, it’s always been people like Neil Young, and Marvin Gaye, the traditional songwriters I guess. I still listen to new records when they drop but for the most part, in terms of my own songwriting I think those formative years when I was just learning what I was doing, they were the people that I loved and its never really changed that much since then. They to me are like the pinnacle of songwriting... that idea of plain-spoken connection.

You worked with OVO’s Nineteen85 and Frank Dukes, what was it like working with them?

It’s hard to talk about it in non-hyperbolic words... you know when you hear people talking about the people that worked on their records and they’re like 'oh my god it was life changing'? I read those things and think 'was it really life changing?' but now I’m in that position it genuinely was. I’ll say life altering.

They come from a different world. The OVO guys are designed to write hip-hop and they’re part of a team of people that have been revolving around one artist for like 5-7 years now, and everything is about the Drake records... there’s nothing like that in the world. There’s no other model of music making that is like their music model, and to be around it is really unique and profound because it’s so low key. It’s always built around a 'what are we doing to make this song the exact thing that it needs to be' rather than making the exact thing we want it to be, which to explain the distinction: 85 said the job isn’t to put all of our dreams on one song because that’s really selfish of us, the job is to do the best thing that we can do whilst saying the least - I know he got that from working on the Drake records. That rattles around my head all day long now, whenever I’m working on anything I’m thinking 'am I doing this just because I’m into that synth line or is it because it’s the best way to say this particular thing?' If it isn’t the best way then I won’t do it.

What else have they taught you that you’ll take with you to your next project?

Even just having them as friends has changed me and the way I think about my own work. I think when we first started talking about making this record I was surprised that they were so excited to work on this record with me because I’m not an artist that has major label budgets, and I’m not an artist that’s got unlimited power to make everything happen. They’re used to working on records where they have that and there’s no clock on the wall... there’s no nothing. I had to make this happen, which took a lot of moving parts working together, but they were just down to do it because they just loved the music. The thing is we’re all really close, musically the things that are connected are way more palpable than the things that separate us. That was really huge for me, it made me think about my own work, and being okay with committing to the ideas that I have in my head, and not worrying about whether someone somewhere thinks it's not fucking arty enough or whatever the fuck.

You usually work alone, but has this process built your confidence?

Yeah, I think so. I’m definitely open on all fronts now to work with anybody that comes my way if the intent and the feeling is right. I’m still tricky to pin down, I’m quite particular to who I will and won’t work with. I think it’s helped me to include people and not be so precious about stuff, and not be afraid to include people in my personal world because a huge part of this album was including people in a part of my world that I would have kept in up to this point - that includes as a song writer and as a producer. I was making all those things myself because I didn’t feel comfortable having people in the room with me. It felt awkward and uncomfortable to me because I didn’t wanna share with people all these ideas before they were fully formed. That’s totally gone now. I have no problem being in a room with anybody and talking to them about anything. If it’s the first time I’ve played something through it feels a lot more natural to me now.

What has been your favourite track to write or produce?

I think on the whole, the song that really felt like the one that I wanted to make and was excited to make more than anything was the fifth track "Evil". With "Evil" as soon as I wrote that I felt I could start making an album for sure; it felt like something. It’s in the same way that "Cavalier" on my second… felt like something, it just felt like a thing that would anchor an album. I’m proud of all of it! It’s like trying to pick your favourite kid.

It seems as though you’re constantly working, when will you start on your next project?

That’s a good question! To a degree I’ve already started thinking about it. The way my brain works is as soon as one thing is written off then the line is drawn and I just tend to go to the next thing, but it’s still going to be a year and a half before I get to do anything meaningful because touring is going to take over my life now – which is what I want. It’s what you sort of live for, so I’m not going to be sitting on the tour bus every night writing. Well, I will, but they’re all little bits and ideas and the actual idea for the album doesn’t tend to come together until further down the line. I’m working on stuff but that’s because I wake up in the morning with these ideas in my head and I have to put them down somewhere.

Is there anyone you’d like to work with in the future?

There’s people I’m a huge fan of. Like a friend of mine from L.A., Blake Mills, he’s an amazing producer that talked about doing something on my record but it never came to play because Blake was so busy. He was working on Alabama Shakes record and he’s doing some amazing stuff at the moment. To be honest, beyond Blake, I just loved the people that I worked with on this record. Once I know people and they know me I don’t really see the need to go and seek out new people. So with Frank, Ben, and Paul, if they wanna make things I’m available to them, I’m in their debt for helping me make this record.

Your tour starts next month, what excited you the most about touring?

I like being on the bus, it suits my personality to be touring, it’s a good place for me. There’s nothing specific standing out to me right now. I guess there are certain venues you go to along the way and you think 'oh shit, I’d love to play here'. When they come up on my tour itinerary I’m always pretty psyched about it. But generally speaking this album was built to be played live so I’m excited to do that. On the last record it was quite stressful because a lot of the songs were studio built, they weren’t built for live, so it was kind of tricky and hard to nail them whereas this one is a complex thing, but it is built to be played live, so I think its going to work in any room that we’re going to.

We Move is out now via Believe/Caroline. It follows 2014's Post Tropical.