LISTENING to the songs of John Murry, it is clear his voice is his own. The Mississippian musician, who now lives in Ireland, has the twang of the US south in his tone but that’s about it.

Murry says: “I had a manager at one time who said my career trajectory had no trajectory.

“She was saying: ‘You just sound like you.’ It was kind of frightening.”

And while some artists wear their influences on their sleeve, the opposite is true of Murry.

The 37-year-old says: “I have absolutely no interest in associating myself with anybody. Either you’re an artist or you’re not.

“In Memphis there were so many things to buff against. I have never thought about it. I have always just felt a desire to create something.

“Some people think about things referentially. I don’t give a s*** about what other people like. I do it for me. If it does resonate with someone, that means a great deal.

“When you hear someone say they blatantly really love something there is a beauty to that, a childlike quality. But I do feel sorry for some of them; they should go get jobs selling real estate.”

One marked aspect of Murry’s music is its depth in tapping into his struggles with drug addiction, a failed marriage and the death of a close friend. It means the performing process can be painful.

Murry says: “I was doing this show and a guy asked me if I hated playing Little Coloured Balloons [a song about heroin]. I asked him if he was an ex-junkie and he said yeah, in a defensive way. And I said: ‘Sometimes I do.’

“I did wonder what it was that people were attracted to with [first album] The Graceless Age. Is it the oblivion? I know there are people who are attracted to that. I created it on a drug that keeps you from the horrors of the world. The album really made me question the world [on listening back].”

Drug-free since 2009, Murry still had to face the death of his friend and album producer Tim Mooney, who became a brother and father figure to him. Mooney died two weeks before the record came out in 2012 from a brain aneurysm. Murry is able to evaluate his intensely personal songs with a bit of perspective now but admits he sometimes gets angry with himself for having written a song “because they no longer feel that they mean what they did when they were written”. But he says: “If it can stir that up in me I feel as if I have to do it.”

Murry is joined on his tour by Stephen Morton, a comic artist with whom he has collaborated to produce a comic book called Monochromatic Propaganda as part of a larger graphic novel series called A Short History Of Decay. The first volume comes out on September 11 and an album of the same title is due out in February. Morton plays drums and keys on Murry’s tour.

Murry has an 11-year-old daughter now, who listens to music but not as he knows it.

He says: “I kind of wonder what she sees music as being. She doesn’t think about a record as being of any importance – she listens on YouTube. We have reverted back to the era of the single.

“I gave my friend some CDs and he said it was an obsolete media. He said everything technically exists in this cloud. Who controls this cloud? It’s such an ominous idea. We live in interesting times.

“One guy said to me: ‘Dude, there’s no point [in thinking about an album as a whole]. Just think about songs. People don’t look at records that way.’ I think it’s true but I hate it.

“One of the records I used to clean my room to as a kid was Green by REM. I can remember loving songs such as Orange Crush and I felt if I pressed fast-forward on the cassette player I was cheating.

“With Graceless Age I put a lot of these sound montages between the mastering markers so that if you skip past songs you would miss them.

“So I feel I’m giving a reward to the people who do put it on while they are cleaning their room.”

>>> Hope And Ruin, Queen’s Road, Brighton, September 14, starts 8pm, tickets £12 adv, 01273 606312. A John Murry acoustic performance and art show takes place at the Evolution Arts Centre in 2 Sillwood Terrace, Brighton, on September 21. Free but limited places so arrive early.