Tropics Of Conversation - James Vincent McMorrow Interview

A fine evening for a Picnic and, in the Hot Press Chatroom, an ebullient, pre-show James Vincent McMorrow is reassuring me that “there are no stupid questions.”

Thank Christ for that. In response to the Dubliner likening the festival experience to a “World Cup for musicians”, I’ve just asked him which team he would be.
“Germany won and I like the Germans,” he says with more consideration than the query warrants. “Ruthless efficiency.”
Preternaturally talented and wholly entertaining, just like the modern Nationalmannschaft, McMorrow is also enjoying something of a victory lap. His second album Post Tropical has been acclaimed in all quarters since its February release – surely vindication for the man who was professing his own infatuation with his creation to Hot Press before its release.
“That makes me sound like a massive narcissist!” he laughs. “Like ‘I’m so in love with my own work I just sit around all day high-fiving myself’... It’s been great, though. I make records for myself but it’s really nice that people like it.”
Location was key for McMorrow when it came to nailing Post Tropical. The Dubliner decamped to the Sonic Ranch, a Texas studio right by the Mexico border.
“The guy that runs it is a giant fairytale character. He probably wouldn’t appreciate me saying that but if you meet him, you’ll know why! He owns a massive farm and it’s incredibly successful but he always wanted to make music and produce records so he built a studio and brought in artists from El Paso and the border of Mexico.
“For better or worse, there’s a giant wall now between them and Mexico that finishes about a mile and a half beyond where his studio is. So his studio went from being incredibly dangerous, and El Paso went from being quite dangerous, to being incredibly safe. On the other side, Juárez went from being relatively okay to the most lethal, most dangerous city in the world."
We’re guessing James didn’t venture past the wall himself?
“No, no! We went down to the border, which was quite sketchy. He has a black X5 BMW with tinted windows and 24” rims so we drove down to the border and backed up next to a white pick-up truck with two dudes fishing out the back of it into a canal. It looked like we were about to go and throw cocaine into the Rio Grande! But then the Border Patrol came by and didn’t stop. They were just like, ‘Whatever…’ Kind of surreal.”
Maybe Border Patrol are big James Vincent McMorrow fans and cut the star some slack. Not a huge leap – America has really taken him to heart, with Post Tropical cementing his reputation as an international talent worthy of attention.
Reviews from across the Atlantic have been effusive in their praise this year, with Spin referring to him as an “ethereal Irishman.”
“’Ethereal Irishman’,” McMorrow muses. “there’s definitely a ring to it. ‘Ethereal' is a word that gets used a lot about me. I don’t really read things but people will say it to me. ‘Someone called you ethereal’. What the fuck does that mean?!”
It’s admittedly true that, sitting on the accompanying couch, he doesn’t seem too ethereal.
“Covered in mud! Ethereal is such a vague idea. That’s cool. Music is such a subjective thing and people’s responses are very different. People hear different things in everything that I do.”
He is thankful that the “hushed tones” lines and wholly inaccurate “beard folk” tags are now a thing of the past. The inventive Post Tropical was informed by Pharrell synths and speed metal and is far closer to the sound he’s been hearing in his head for years than debut Early In The Morning. And, post-Chatroom natter, he’s primed and ready to sing Blackstreet rap classic ‘No Diggity’ with the Booka Brass Band. There’s nothing hushed
about him.
“I think on the first record I was – and I completely get it – at the mercy of the situation. I put out a record with no money or no idea of how to promote it and I just let people find it.
“The best thing that I did when I thought about making Post Tropical was to not care about anything that happened after I made it. Even now when I’m working on records for other people or working on my own stuff, the sense of not caring – in the most lovely way – is something I’ve really carried out of making that album. Because it was the first time I made something for the love of doing it. At that stage, it doesn’t really matter what people say. You want people to like things. I’m ambitious and I want to play big shows in front of as many people as possible but fundamentally my job is to make whatever I hear in my head and stand behind it one hundred per cent. If you can’t do that, there’s no point in making music.”
At this point, the room erupts in applause. A good place to leave things, even if we’re missing a huge amount – McMorrow talking about the merits of the Die Hard series, declaring Beyoncé to be the world’s greatest living entertainer, some surreal Phil Collins talk and, finally, a request from the audience to take the ice bucket challenge. You can catch it all on hotpress.com. That ice bucket challenge still hasn’t surfaced online, however. Just sayin’, James...

Post Tropical is out now