James Vincent McMorrow’s debut record, Early In The Morning, is an album he originally self recorded, played and released in Ireland last year, and which got its US release just a few days ago. For those unfamiliar with McMorrow, the record is laced with haunting melodies, mythical storytelling, and musical structures that bring a singular and unique vision to the traditional folk style that emerged in the states in the 1960s.

The story really begins in January of 2009 when he moved to an isolated house by the Irish Sea, about an hour outside of Dublin, with the intention to record a demo. Within a month James found he loved the sound he was getting, and decided to create an album. “It took six months. I recorded and played everything myself, using one microphone and a computer, and all the equipment and instruments I’d used to make my first demos. In June 2009 I played it for people for the first time and everyone seemed to really get it.”

Early In The Morning begins with a five-part harmony echoing over the sounds of an organ and folk guitar in the eerie opener, If I Had A Boat. Towards the latter half of the record a darker tone emerges, creating ominous figures, and a wholly tangible sense of tension and foreboding. Drawing on his childhood love of Roald Dahl, as well as his fascination with American novelists such as John Steinbeck and F Scott Fitzgerald, James draws life from their writings because “they all examine the darker less spoken about aspects of life, solitude, disillusionment. I’m not one for defining a lyric, or what it definitively means, but songs like Follow You Down To The Red Oak Tree, From The Woods, and Down The Burning Ropes are certainly me exorcising the underside of my personality. The characters I create in those songs, the ones existing in the shadows, they are all elements of me for sure.”

You can buy via iTunes in the US (but not the UK yet) from here or order the album, and some other merchandise, by clicking here.

Download James Vincent McMorrow – If I Had A Boat mp3 (from Early In The Morning)