A Place Of Real Stakes: James Vincent McMorrow’s ‘Wide Open, Horses’ Runs Free
- James Vincent McMorrow's latest album "Wide Open, Horses" marks a departure from his previous work, showcasing a more introspective and nostalgic approach to songwriting.
James Vincent McMorrow's latest album Wide Open, Horses feels much like sitting under the shade of a big tree. Like cool grass on the back of your knees. The peace of solitude kissing your neck. The whispering of the wind pregnant with its many elusive truths about life. It feels like the warm wood planks of an unpainted picket fence crookedly pounded into the earth. Like the crackle of fire and the smell of smoke at dusk. Like a night sky so pitch black it plays tricks on the eyes. Like comfort in the unknown. Like respite.
Yes, Wide Open, Horses features McMorrow's signature controlled vocals, his voice teeming with palpable ache, but it also sees the Irish singer-songwriter doing something a bit different. Where he once charged forward – even earning the description "unpredictable" – McMorrow is now finding joy in revisiting old ideas and motifs. Not for the sole sake of nostalgia or ease, however. Rather, to complete unclosed loops left open by his first two albums, this time with a decade more life under his belt. The result? Each track from Wide Open, Horses reads like the succeeding leaflet of a 13-page previously un-mailed love letter, both romantic and platonic – one that's finally been stripped, stamped, and sent. According to McMorrow, it's the best and most important record he's made.
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In line with the album's June 14 release, SPIN talked to McMorrow about what it takes to generate a work so visceral (his seventh to be exact), what he'd do without music, regaining control of his universe, and so much more:
SPIN:Your career has been described as "unpredictable" and your approach as "genre-disrupting." Do you agree with and/or take pride in these descriptions?
JVM:Unpredictable is definitely a word a lot of people who work for me would use. Honestly, I just find the machinations of the music industry pretty tedious; the idea of doing the same thing over and over again seemed and still seems uninteresting to me. If that manifests as unpredictable or genre-disrupting, and people see that in the spirit that I intend it, then great.
Genre is a notion I've never understood. My first album was very much in the middle of that wave of indie folk, and I was grateful to be part of it, but as success came, I felt an obligation to myself to push deeper into songwriting and production and explore the sounds and ideas I loved. Yeah, it might cost you something. I could have ridden that wave, but I would have been bored out of my fucking mind doing the same thing. When I made my second album, it surprised a lot of people, but then time has been incredibly kind to that record, and making that decision is what gave me my career.
How would you describe your sound? Who are your Inspirations? And do you feel as though you've landed where you want to be sonically?
I'm pretty fluid in terms of sounds and inspirations. I'd be hopeful that at this point, with six albums behind me, the sound is quite specifically mine. It falls within the broad idea of singer-songwriter for sure; I'm a solo human in a room making albums and songs, and I follow those beginning/middle/end structures. But within that, in my own way, I try to subvert and reframe as much as I can, especially as a producer.
I grew up on songwriters like Neil Young and Fiona Apple, and sonically I grew up wanting to be Pharrell. Sometimes a song wants just a voice and a guitar, but a lot of times, it wants you to subtract that guitar and illustrate those chords another way; the chord C major has never gotten old to me because I can turn on a prophet 6 or poly evolver and explore that chord and if it hits it hits. Have I landed where I want to be? The answer is no, I don't think I ever will, because there's always a new way to articulate a C major chord in the studio.
In a recent Instagram post, you mentioned you've never been good at selling yourself because you only care about the music. If not music, what do you believe you'd be doing with your life?
In relation to that comment, I was talking about the realities of being a musician outside of the actual creation of the music. I always thought the facade of musicianship, the aesthetic, never really moved me as a fan. I'm only interested in the music, and if the package looks and seems true to the music, then that's all I need.
If it weren't making music, I would build things. I do a lot of woodworking. I bought a new house a couple of years back, and I'll happily throw myself into meticulously stripping a staircase back and slowly refinishing it; anything that feels tangible and where I can see the results in real-time, I'm into. Maybe it's a reaction to being in music where so much of it is opaque and out of my control. But I do think being a musician gives you a massive amount of patience because you need to keep pushing the boulder up the hill. Those skills translate well to manual labor.
Let's talk about the new album, Wide Open, Horses . How did the titular track become the titular track? What does the name mean?
The lyric, at one point, had a line that ended "fence wide open," and the next line started with the word "horses…", and I just liked how it looked on the page. The lyric evolved away from that, but I stayed with it as the album title and the song title because it felt really evocative but also opaque enough that it could be read a few different ways.
What inspired you to write and record a new album?
I spent a rough few years sitting on a major label during the pandemic. It was tough timing; I made a move to them right before the world kind of stopped, I'd finished the album, but I was fairly lost in a fog for the entire process. It really wore me down and I came out the other side of it just not sure if I wanted to release music any more. I do a fair bit of songwriting and production for other people and I love it because I only have to focus on the music making and none of the fucking nonsense of releases and aggregating art down to a commodity. So I thought maybe I'd just focus on that.
But then I started thinking about how I used to do things, where there were real stakes and massive potential for failure. The irony was that all of those moments had been successful because I was in control of my universe, whereas the one time I gave in to that big business energy of the music world because it told me it would succeed on my behalf was a creative failure.
I wanted to go back to a place of real stakes. So, in 2023, I put on some big shows in Dublin, where I played unfinished songs for a crowd. We all went on this bizarre but pretty spiritual experience together, and all those songs then became this album.
What does the songwriting process look like for you?
I was exclusively using a notepad for lyrics, and then it slowly evolved into my laptop and then my phone. I've gone back to notepads now. There was a real hubris that crept in with my phone. I'm not a romantic when it comes to the medium, whatever works best is all I need. But there's an intentionality and an effort in committing words to paper that a phone doesn't have, and that was the thing I was missing.
My process is pretty nonlinear. Usually, it'll start with a chord progression or a melody sung into my phone. I take it to the studio and then explore it, deconstruct it, and try it with different instruments and ideas. The process is open-ended; it's rarely a short one because I like the exploration period a lot. I have a studio at my house where ideas start, then I'll take them to another spot. For this last album, I did a lot of it at Paul Epworth's studio, The Church in London. I tried to do this one in a way that kept it exciting and fun, so no more than five days in the studio at a time. If the vibe is gone, don't force it – go do something else. I think you can hear it in the finished thing, there's an air and a lightness of touch that I think was missing a little from my last records.
"White Out" is a standout track on the album for obvious reasons…
[It was the] easiest to write and record. That song is a single take on a single mic, sung really late at night in the living room of my house. The initial version of that song was actually much closer to a Deftones song, which wouldn't have fit the album at all. But I loved the song so I just pulled it back and kept it really lean.
How does Wide Open, Horses differ from the rest of your discography? In which ways is it the same?
There are specific ties between it and the first two albums. Those two records I was bumping up so aggressively against the ceiling of my ambition as a writer and a producer. So there were a lot of unclosed loops in my mind as relates to those records. The last thing I'd ever do is let nostalgia dictate my movements, but it was lovely going back to some of those motifs and ideas with the skill set I now have ten years later. Because my discography does have certain twists and turns in it, there are certain records that fit nicely together as groups. I see this album as very much completing a circle with those albums… or I guess it would be a pyramid.
The album is out now, you'll be on tour starting tomorrow, and you also have a documentary called Chaos in Atrophy debuting on June 20. Things appear to be moving, things appear to be good. How are things with you, truly? And what's next for James Vincent McMorrow?
If you ask me day to day, you might get different answers. Today I feel really good, yesterday I felt not good. As I've said before, the industry side of music isn't something that's an easy fit for me – releasing albums, being judged, putting yourself out there. It's part and parcel of it, you know what you're signing up for, so i'm not complaining. But that also doesn't mean I, or anyone, can just magically make themselves well-built for all of that.
There's a reason why I was happiest when I was just existing below the water line, commercially successful but also with enough bandwidth to do it my way. When I was on a major label, and it was about just exponential leveling up, I cratered on all fronts. I understand that now, and I'm back to doing it my way. But I also know I have to build it back out again because there were years when I lost my way, and I haven't actually toured extensively since I took a break in 2017.
But I think this album is really great, I'm taking ownership of my pride in the work and standing behind that. It's the best thing I've made in a long time, I think for me it's the best and most important record I've made. But the world will receive it however it receives it, I can't control that.
Get tickets to James Vincent McMorrow's North American tour here .
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