James Morse

Somewhere at the intersection between classic narrative songwriting, instrumental experimentation, and ambient expression, James Morse is an independent singer-songwriter, visual artist, and producer based in Atlanta, Ga. He began writing music from an early age and produced his first album, The Desert (2016), Justin Vernon-esque style in a garage with just an SM-57 and mixing help from friend and fellow Michigan-based artist, Chris DuPont. Since then, he’s gone on to collaborate and produce three more full-length albums ranging from a DIY/lo-fi aesthetic to proper studio quality when he recorded with Damon Moon at Standard Electric Recorders for the album Young in 2018. His latest, Camera Obscura, is a luminous meditation on death and the meaning found on the other side of it. The record was self-produced with a patchwork of gear James has collected over the years which led to an archival of sounds, textures, and vintage colors supporting an intimate lyrical experience. Often thriving in the midst of limitations in time, money, or resources (frequently self-imposed), James is a creator at heart, and always seems to find a way to keep making things.

Born and raised in the South but with roots in the Northeast, James is conscious of a mythic, Southern, Gothic sensibility, hearkening through lyrical prose to a harrowing realist experience. Both the real and the imagined are part of James’s aesthetic vision whether through lush harmonies and instrumentation or the stark open space of contemplation, much like the fiction of Dostoevsky and O’Connor, or the architecture of Gaudí. His sound is often described as similar to Ben Howard, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, Youth Lagoon, Nick Drake, and Henry Jamison, and he’s shared the stage with up and coming Southeastern acts Tyler Key, Book Club, Betsy Phillips, Bea Troxel, and Big Brutus. Like these artists, James tries to let the work speak for itself as it expresses something deeply personal.