James: Living in Extraordinary Times
If James were a man, they would be married, mortgaged up and due a mid-life crisis any time now. Aged 36, they’ve been around the block and back again.
Starting out as contemporaries of The Smiths, they signed to Factory, rose during the heady days of Madchester, when Sit Down became an outlier indie-dance anthem, peaked during Britpop and have continued to flourish into middle age. Their last album, 2016’s Girl At The End Of The World, reached No 2.
Through it all, they have retained an underdog status, loitering on the fringes of passing fads and scenes.
If James have proved too awkward for canonisation, they have at least avoided being date-stamped. Increasingly, it seems like a smart trade-off.
Tim Booth, lead singer of James, performing at Rock in Rio Lisboa (2018) at Parque da Bela Vista
Their 15th studio album is business as usual. Aside from some glitchy electronics and modish production touches, it could be a James album from any point in the past 30 years. The songs throw the same shapes, conjure a familiar atmosphere. They are structurally simple, loose, ascending, percussive, with big tunes and questioning words.
With its drums and horn fanfare, Hank is quintessential James, uplifting and melancholic in equal measure. Leviathan is the kind of emotive, mid-paced anthem U2 would flog their private jet for. Coming Home (Pt 2), the lament of the travelling musician to his son, is a sequel of sorts to their 1989 hit Come Home.
The album title is a twist on the ambivalent Chinese blessing/curse: ‘May you live in interesting times.’ An Englishman domiciled in California for the past decade, Tim Booth feels compelled to comment on the tumultuous state of the nation. Hank has ‘white fascists in the White House’, while the clattering, disjointed funk of Heads reveals that ‘fake news divides to conceal’.
Booth at the Hope and Glory Festival in Liverpool performing in front of devoted James fans
Mostly, Booth still comes on like a charismatic humanities lecturer turned shamanic cult leader. Imagine Bono on a strict diet of pulses, yoga and Amazonian hallucinogens.
When not denouncing Trump, he provides corny but rousing Twitter-friendly aphorisms: ‘F****** love – before they drop the bomb, make sure you get enough’ is one. The best – ‘There’s only one human race, many faces, everybody belongs here’ – would look good on the side of a bus.
There are enough contemporary touches. Picture Of This Place has a relentless ‘motorik’ groove, hard-edged and churning. Many Faces moves from campfire mariachi to the chill-out room without dropping a stitch.
James listeners at Castlefield Bowl soak up the atmosphere of Booth’s performance at Manchester International Festival
James are evolving but incrementally. This is no midlife crisis. It’s good to know that in extraordinary times, some things stay more or less the same.
THIS WEEK’S CD RELEASES
by ADAM WOODS
The Jayhawks
Back Roads And Abandoned Motels Out now
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Country-rockers The Jayhawks, now 32 years from their debut, have recorded a stash of songs that frontman Gary Louris wrote with and for other artists. So Everybody Knows and Bitter End have previously been Dixie Chicks songs, Gonna Be A Darkness once belonged to Jakob Dylan, and so on. It feels pleasantly low-stakes – well-made songs, classily played with no flash.
Boz Scaggs
Out of the Blues Out now
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You don’t expect raw sounds from Boz Scaggs, slick blue-eyed soul star of the Seventies. So when he makes a blues album, we’re not talking about the roaring, hellbound kind but a smooth yet heartfelt set of mostly covers, with smouldering horns, high-end guitar work and his own high, pure voice. A cover of Neil Young’s On The Beach is a highlight, and among his guest players are Dylan sideman Charlie Sexton and Ray Parker Jr.
Fairport Convention & Friends
A Tree with Roots Out Fri
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Folk-rock legends Fairport Convention made Bob Dylan’s songs their own in the Sixties and Seventies. A big chunk of their classic Unhalfbricking album was Dylan covers, and this set rounds up 17 such efforts, including singer Sandy Denny’s solo versions of It Ain’t Me Babe and Tomorrow Is A Long Time. There’s a ragged brilliance at work here.
Erasure
World be Live Out now
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Like fellow Eighties synth duo Pet Shop Boys, Erasure’s early hits just seem to sound greater as the years go by, their knack for a yearning hook little short of Abba-ish. World Be Live mixes about half of last year’s top-ten album World Be Gone with a dose of oldies, revealing that Andy Bell’s stage banter is sweetly cheery. A Little Respect, Sometimes, Always et al are magical pop tunes, even in their rough-edged concert versions.