We Move

We Move is James Vincent McMorrow's most expansive, generous and ambitious record to date. It is ultimately a record open in its portrait of anxiety and social unease. For McMorrow, it's about celebrating mental fragility - and how we move forward in life. The result is an album about movement - geographically, mentally, emotionally - which remains focused on finding your place in that future. The first steps to We Move took place in 2014, when James - having been asked to write for different artists' projects - started sketching out ideas for others on tour (and subsequently stopped over-analysing his own work).

Intent on doing the opposite of everything he'd done thus far, McMorrow then came off the road, but kept exploring: first through Barcelona, then Canada, and stopping in Los Angeles for six particularly fish-out-of-water months, where the songs for the album crystallised. He returned to Dublin determined not to just produce another album himself, but to work with people who could articulate the unique world he heard in his head ("I grew up wanting to write songs like Neil Young but produce them like The Neptunes"). And so James reached out to a few key co-producers he'd met whilst travelling, who formed the backbone of We Move: namely, "Nineteen85" (Drake, DVSN), "Two Inch Punch" (Sam Smith, Years and Years), and "Frank Dukes" (Kanye West, Rihanna).

Mixing took place largely in Miami with one of McMorrow's all-time heroes, Jimmy Douglass - known for his work from Donny Hathaway through to Timbaland - who finessed the record's warm, vintage yet forward-thinking feel.