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Leicester O2 Academy – 5th July 2017

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Setlist

Walk Like You / Dear John / Hymn From A Village / How Was It For You / Say Something / Busted / Overdose / I Know What I'm Here For / Born Of Frustration / Feet Of Clay / Stripmining / She's A Star / Of Monsters And Heroes And Men / Moving On / Laid / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Attention / Come Home / Sometimes / Nothing But Love

The Fan VIP Soundcheck included:
Stripmining / Trouble / I Know What I'm Here For

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Shaking Chains

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Billed as the warm-up/debut gig of the Summer 2017 ‘Daisy Tour’, James cover hits, recent songs, as well as older archive material. Also included was the debut of two new songs that the band are still working on, named Busted and Overdose. A third new song, Trouble, was played at the fan VIP Soundcheck, but not at the gig itself.

Top Of The World was included as the last song on the setlist, but the support band overran, James hit the 11PM curfew, and it was dropped.

A full gig review is at EvenTheStars.co.uk

Sheffield O2 Academy – 9th December 2016

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Setlist

Walk Like You / Ring The Bells / Surfer's Song / To My Surprise / Hymn From A Village / Ten Below / Waltzing Along / Moving On / Born Of Frustration / Vervaceous / All Good Boys / Five-O / Dear John / Just Like Fred Astaire / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Come Home / Attention / She's A Star / Sometimes / Nothing But Love

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The Slow Readers Club

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Read the review at EvenTheStars.co.uk.

Scarborough Open Air Theatre – 22nd May 2015

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Setlist

Walk Like You / Ring The Bells / Waltzing Along / Curse Curse / Interrogation / Hymn From A Village / Nothing But Love / Just Like Fred Astaire / PS / Don't Wait That Long / Sound / Moving On / Laid / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Sit Down / Come Home / Sometimes

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James Walsh

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The first ever performance of Nothing But Love; the only ever preview of a Girl At The End Of The World song before the recording sessions.

Review EvenTheStars

James opened their festival season with a headline slot at Scarborough’s Open Air Theatre. Fresh from several weeks recording in a London studio, they debuted a new song and mixed together tracks from last year’s La Petite Mort album with a series of their best-known fan favourites.

Scarborough Open Air Theatre is an interesting gig location for a band that creates the energy that James does. Set in a picturesque park on the outskirts of town, the crowd are perched on a steep set of banking seats separated from the band by a lake that there’s no way of crossing because there’s a protection order on some crested newts that mate in its waters. For a band that often makes a connection by Tim Booth venturing into the crowd, it’s a challenge as he is stage-bound throughout by sheer geography, but a band like James are past masters at dealing with such scenarios and communicating with their audience in a way so few bands can do.

Opening with Walk Like You, the first track on last year’s renaissance (and every album they do now feels just like one of those), they send a statement out that this isn’t just simply going to be an exercise in running through their hits for an audience fuelled by the early appearance of the sun and a bit of seafront beer. Looking around though you sense, by the number of people singing along, that the crowd get this. As the first festival season gig people have travelled from far and wide for this show as evidenced by the local DJ doing shout-outs to people between opener James Walsh and James themselves.

Ring The Bells is next up and, despite being one of the few pretty much constants in the set, it’s a song that never feels like it’s outstayed its welcome and needs a rest. Right from the opening drum salvo, it’s a little cyclone of energy that gets people up and dancing. Whilst not possessing the killer chorus that so many of their hits do, it embodies so much about the band as each of them play a significant part in building it to its chaotic conclusion when all hell breaks loose in a wall of improvised noise. Waltzing Along is a little more traditional in its verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure, but feels reinvigorated these days, having benefitted from a rest a couple of years back, not played at every show and having been reassessed and reworked slightly without losing the basics of the song that make it so popular with the fans.

Curse Curse and Interrogation follow and it’s refreshing to see how many songs from La Petite Mort have retained their place in this set, firstly because the songs stand up around the monolithic hits from the nineties that surround them but also that they serve as a reminder that, unlike so many bands that have made a return, they’re creating new music that stands on its own two feet. Mark Hunter’s signature keyboards are all over the former, teetering it on the line between eighties disco stomp and alternative anthem. Scarborough raises its collective arms and sings along to Tim Booth’s wistful recollection of a couple in the next hotel room going at it hammer and tongs. Interrogation, in contrast, is a dark brooding tale of self-assessment where the band take over mid way through and let loose to build the song from the claustrophobic into a stunning explosion of sound whilst Tim dances away, seemingly lost in a trance.

The next two songs are bookends of the band. First up is Hymn From A Village, released in 1985 but dating back a few years earlier. Gone are the jingly and jangly indie guitar strains that characterised their early work and made so many of us fall in love with them even back then and in its place is a confident strident aural assault that manages, somehow, to keep faith with the original whilst bringing it smack bang up to date.

It’s followed by the world premiere of a new song that Tim tells us is called All About Nothing and that “in true James fashion, we don’t know it yet and this is probably the only one we could play”. They’re in the studio at the moment recording a new album and if this is the first fruits we’re in for another album that reflects on the meaning of life with the opening words along the lines of “nothing but love gives the world some meaning, nothing but love is the drug of healing.” There’s references to avalanches, earthquakes and volcanos and a gorgeous keyboard-driven breakdown. Like so many James songs revealed early in their evolution, it’s likely to change significantly before it’s released, but it doesn’t seem that their creative spark is dimming any time soon.

Just Like Fred Astaire is next and as the light fades it starts to feel a lot more like a gig. The song swirls around the arena and lifts us all up. Rather than run a list of hits until the end of the set they perform PS, with the stage bathed in a beautiful red light accentuating the depth of feeling that pours out of each and every line of the song. Similarly Don’t Wait That Long, a song that they’ve never quite managed to capture live in my opinion since they came back, is finally conquered tonight, beautifully brooding, slightly menacing and perfect for that mid-set contemplation before the inevitable onslaught of anthems that is waiting in the wings.

Despite the distance between band and audience there’s no problem in creating a connection across the water. Sound is a case in point, it ripples across the water, up the steep banking and back down again carrying the love and energy of the crowd back up to the stage. As they take the song down and start to improvise it’s no less powerful and the reaction at the end as the crowd pick up the “mah bah ooh” refrain and sing it back, tells its own story. The amount of people singing every word of Moving On and the response it gets is testament to how James are still making connections to people with their newer material – whilst Booth was always seen as something of an outsider by the press at their peak, there’s thousands of people here to whom he is one of us, singing about things that matter to us, singing about what we feel every day and that’s never gone away and why James have endured and maintained that connection with their fans that so few bands, even those that have gone on to bigger things and grander stages, fail to achieve.

Laid is as completely bonkers as ever and by this point everyone’s on their feet, the pathway in front of the seats is full of people dancing, recreating, recapturing their youth, but also with people who weren’t around first time round and Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) concludes the set with everyone picking it up and singing it before Tim can come in. For a song that felt like it crept out at the tail end of the pre-split incarnation of James, it’s developed into a monstrous calling card, a song that transcended chart positions to be one to fill arenas and theatres and join band and audience together.

They leave the stage and they’re gone a while creating fears that the supposed 10pm curfew might strike them down and not allow them back, but it turns out they were trying to find a way to come into the crowd and perform some songs acoustically. Alas, that wasn’t to be and they return to the stage and start up with Sit Down, which Tim explains was rested last year. Tonight it’s all about celebration and communion and whilst all James songs have that spirit coursing through them, this one does hold a special resonance for so many as it was their introduction to the band. Come Home sends the crowd into even more of a frenzy, fighting for space to dance and that continues through the closing Sometimes which leaves the crowd singing the chorus for a good ten minutes afterwards as everyone makes their way out into the Scarborough night.

All in all, this was a successful opening night of the summer for James. The fears that the venue set-up could dampen the celebratory spirit and connection that characterises James gigs were fortunately unfounded. The band sounded extremely tight given it was their first gig for six months but weren’t afraid to let go and improvise in parts either. The set mixed old and new, familiar and less familiar and continued their tradition of revealing songs that are work in progress.

Read the review at Even The Stars.

Birmingham NIA – 22nd November 2014

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Setlist

Sound / Walk Like You / Frozen Britain / Ring The Bells / Curse Curse / Laid / All Good Boys / All Im Saying / Hymn From A Village / Stutter / Out To Get You / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Moving On / Come Home / Gone Baby Gone / Born Of Frustration / Interrogation / Sometimes

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(Even The Stars)

Saturday night in Birmingham and we’re in the soulless pit of the NIA waiting for James to transcend the appalling organization of the place, half-built facilities, stupid rules and the general feeling that this is all a terrible inconvenience to those in charge of ensuring people’s visit to their place of work. Thank God music usually always wins.

Starsailor open the evening and we catch most of their set and to be fair to them they’ve transformed my not particularly warm view of them before the tour into a grudging recognition that they’re not that bad. They play new songs from their forthcoming fourth album as well as some of their classic singles, so there’s reason there to give them the benefit of the doubt, and songs like Four To The Floor and Good Souls have aged particularly well. What’s also clear is that, despite the venue being an absolute hellhole, the one thing they’ve actually got right is the sound.

James come on stage, on time for once (well within five minutes) and immediately break into the opening bars of Sound. It feels a bit odd with it at the start of the set as it restricts the improvisational opportunity a little as a ten minute plus opener might even be a step too far for James. What’s clear tonight is that there seems a real sense of purpose and focus and they’re incredibly tight. Whilst it’s that looseness, that getting away with all messed up vibe, that makes every James show unique, tonight is particularly special because it’s not as apparent as it usually is. Tim ends up dancing on Dave’s drum riser as the rest of the band take over.

Two seven minute songs to start the show is a brave move but Walk Like You has to be an early set calling card, the marker for La Petite Mort, with its bold, striving, euphoric declaration of “let’s inspire, let’s inflame, create art from our pain” distilling the very James ethic into song. Frozen Britain has been criminally underplayed on this tour, a playful teasing romp, an obvious single but also with enough in the song for them to play around with it, extending the outro.

Ring The Bells is classic Saturday night James fayre, one of their strongest big anthem songs and one that never feels old or jaded in the way some do occasionally need resting and revitalising (see last year’s resurrection of Waltzing Along). Larry’s guitar solo fills the rooms accompanied by blasts of Andy’s trumpet and thousands of arms are raised in exaltation as it reaches its devastating conclusion.

Immediately warming is the reception the opening bars of Curse Curse gets, it’s greeted like an old favourite rather than the typical reaction new album songs by most bands get at gigs like this. Tim makes his way down to the barrier, stands surveying the melee in front of him and belatedly drops forward onto a sea of raised arms, struggling to keep hold of his microphone as people move towards him. Ably assisted by Ron Yeadon’s backing vocals, Dave’s frenetic drums and Mark’s keyboard wizardry the song is made for arenas of this size. The fact it can stand toe-to-toe with Laid, which raises the heat and the joy in the room still further, is testament to the power of the record they’ve just released.

It feels like the crowd need a breather as it’s been full-on from the start and the gorgeous, drifting, dreamy All Good Boys is the perfect tonic, but incredibly, given it was a b-side cast away in the depths of the back catalogue and even some of the band had forgotten about it, it works perfectly. The lilting acoustic guitar of the opening, Saul’s vocals on the second verse, the multi-vocal chorus and ending to the song make it feel like an old friend and questions why it was ever treated so dismissively back at the turn of the century.

All I’m Saying has been stopped twice on this tour due to too much noise in the audience, but Birmingham perfectly respects Tim’s request for assistance with it by keeping quiet and as the song builds, it feels like the love and pain of the song is being expunged from Tim and dissipated amongst each and every one of us.

We then turn the clock back thirty years for a duo of Hymn From A Village and Stutter. The former feels nothing like its age, its buoyant, ferocious rhythm something that has lived in the bloodline and heritage of James’ songs throughout their career. Stutter is something truly extra-ordinary, it transcends being a mere song to be something absolutely unique and it’s accompanied by a light show that at one point even threatens to overshadow the wall of sound that’s coming from the stage. Tim describes it as losing control of your mouth, something that needs to become an art if you want to be a singer. The reason it’s never been released in studio form is probably because it’d be impossible to.

Out To Get You is another one of those songs that benefitted from a rest. It’s a crowd favourite despite it obviously not being a single as it’s a song that everyone can relate to, but its end section has been revitalised by it being taken out of the set and brought back in and revisited with fresh eyes and ears. They then realise they’ve maybe missed PS out of the set in their rush from Stutter to Out To Get You (although it’s not clear as this isn’t on the setlist Larry tweeted later). Tim jokes they couldn’t have played the wrong song because “it didn’t sound shit”.

A trio of singles from different eras of James bring the set to close to its conclusion. Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) is a calling card for probably the most difficult period of James’ career on many levels, but such a triumphant soaring engaging song that never got its proper recognition until they came back in 2007. Moving On is the bottling of modern-day James into one of those anthems that they’re best known for, reaching with out-stretched arms and creating one massive group hug for everyone in the arena, particularly when Tim talks about his Mum’s death as an “uplifting loss”. Come Home just gets more rampant, more jagged, more chaotic with age, growing old as disgracefully as many of their audience.

The main set closes with Gone Baby Gone. Tim invites people up on stage to dance and many more take it upon themselves to chance their arm at getting up. Only first played live a couple of weeks ago, it’s been the revelation of the tour, having gone from the band being worried about how to recreate it to being the show-stopping ending, Tim losing himself in ecstatic dancing surrounded by his dancing acolytes, Ron again providing backing vocals that play against Tim’s to great effect. It needs to be a single and stay in the set.

For the encore, Tim and Andy make their way out to the seated areas of the arena, Tim roaming around looking for connections amongst the sea of phones, ducking and diving past too keen admirers as the hall is filled by the sound of trumpets and guitars. Interrogation is as dark and fierce as it’s been on the tour so far showcasing a darker undercurrent to James’s sound not as evident in their more radio-friendly moments.

They close with Sometimes and the great thing about it on this tour is that whilst it is now the obvious set closer it’s ended up being different each and every night. Tonight, the band stop playing, Tim stops singing and it looks like they’re going to leave the stage until the crowd start it back up for a couple of minutes, then the band strike up something that sounds nothing like the song, a type of free-form improvisation and Tim goes back down into the crowd for a bit of crowd-surfing.

Tonight was one of those nights that James gave the crowd exactly what they wanted (well, maybe a few wanted the song that cannot be mentioned), but without playing it safe – tons of huge anthems, a large chunk of the new album but selected to match the mood and occasion, a nod to their very earliest days and a couple of songs that very few might know. The sound and the lighting were pretty much perfect too. What wasn’t there in the terms of the usual Jamesian chaos was more than made up for in power and purpose.

London Brixton Academy – 21st November 2014

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Setlist

Sound / Walk Like You / Just Like Fred Astaire / Curse Curse / Laid / All Good Boys / Johnny Yen / Hymn From a Village / What's the World / Jam J / Out to Get You / Vervaceous / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Moving On / Come Home / Gone Baby Gone / Interrogation / Born of Frustration / Sometimes

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Newcastle O2 Academy – 17th November 2014

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Walk Like You / Say Something / Frozen Britain / Seven / Curse Curse / Laid / PS / All Good Boys / All Im Saying / Greenpeace / Hymn From A Village / Born Of Frustration / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Tomorrow / Come Home / Gone Baby Gone / Out To Get You / Moving On / Sometimes

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(Even The Stars)

After the arenas of the weekend, James crammed a couple of thousand Geordies into the Newcastle Academy for a long sold-out show and pulled off their best gig of the tour so far.

Walk Like You is the ideal opener for this tour, even ignoring its position at the start of La Petite Mort, because it puts down a marker for what’s to come. It makes a statement that the show is going to be about the new record, but how accessible and powerful that record is live. Like Bubbles off Hey Ma, it shows so many sides of James all wrapped up in one song. It ends in a fury of improvisation, different every night and tonight Andy and Saul take control with trumpet and violin. The roar at the end sets the scene for the evening.

Say Something is an inspired choice early on in the set, it works so much better at the start than it does towards the end where it can feel like an obvious choice. From front to back of the rammed Academy floor arms are raised aloft, singing in union as Tim perches perilously on the barrier.

Frozen Britain makes a welcome appearance in the set. The first released calling card for La Petite Mort, it’s fun and playful on the record, but live, with a looser arrangement and an extended outro, it’s a massive-hit-in-another-time romp. Newcastle loves it and you think the punchline “La petite mort pour toujours” is a statement of the longevity of this record. The response is no less powerful than Seven which follows it, testament to the fact that this record has made a serious connection with the wider fan base in a way they haven’t for a long time.

Curse Curse rams this point home. Again tied together with Laid, the comparison is inevitable and it’s a favourable one. The joyous abandon, mischievous wink and slightly out of character “pour me more tequila” matching that of “you’re driving me crazy when are you coming home” and the breakneck speed of the song make them feel like twins. You can feel the energy transferring from crowd to band and back to the crowd. Laid sees Larry going walkabout around the stage, Tim continually prowling around all evening looking for connections, interesting bits of improvisation to hook on to. Newcastle belts everything out at full volume and you suspect that there might be a few Geordies with sore throats and no voice this morning.

They then move seamlessly into the beautiful mournful spiteful PS and the crowd shut up and get it as the room is bathed in bright red light as the song moves to its conclusion with Larry’s signature slide guitar and a jaw-dropping violin solo from Saul to which you could hear a pin drop in the crowd. Similarly All Good Boys gets the respect it deserves as well. Having resurrected it on this tour you have to wonder how the hell some of the songs on Millionaires (and Ultra) got the nod over this. Saul’s verse vocals work perfectly in contrast to Tim’s in the context of the song and the end section where five voices come together feels like a genuine epiphany. They joke about it being a b-side and what constitutes a b-side, Saul commenting that it’s something you throw away.

There’s a bit more discussion when Tim suggests doing Interrogation instead of All I’m Saying which is on the setlist, but is quickly reminded by Saul and Larry that it’s the new single. You suspect Tim’s worried about the audience being quiet such is the response they’ve generated tonight, but if that’s the case then there was no need for concern as his request for silence whilst he sings is met with just that. Still an odd choice for a single, it’s a beautiful eulogy to a lost friend wrapped up in one of those classic James songs that start quiet and build into something more expansive.

Greenpeace is more suited to this size of venue than the arenas of the weekend as the light show fills the hall completely. It’s marred by Tim’s second microphone not working properly for parts of the song – it’s not the first time it’s happened on the tour and needs to be sorted out if it’s going to stay in the set, particularly when Stutter gets left out in its place.

Hymn From A Village is a blast from the past. It betrays its age, having matured like a fine wine, beefed itself up and expanded its girth in the thirty years since its conception. In the VIP soundcheck, a gentleman enquired as to whether James had considered going back and re-recording songs from their past with the current line-up and revisiting them. Hymn would be a prime candidate for that treatment.

And then there’s Born Of Frustration. Tim gets to the barrier, looks down at the crowd, has a think to himself and then projects himself forward onto a sea of arms. Rather than grab at him, they lift him and carry him back to the mixing desk, perform a turn manoeuvre on him and send him back on his way down the other side of the crowd, all without him missing a note, them dropping their pints and, unlike Glasgow, copping a feel and performing a colonoscopy.

The James anthem to their own ability to rescue victory from the jaws of defeat and disaster, Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) descends into on-stage chaos at the start and the crowd simply take over and sing the first verse and chorus much to the amazement of the band. They kick back in, but Tim’s pretty much drowned out by singing all the way through.

Tomorrow and Come Home turn things up another notch, there’s few people now not dancing, not singing along to every single word. These are songs that mean the world to people in these parts, as every bit important as that song that is not being played on this tour. The stunning light show simply adds to the impact as both songs career to their peaks.

They finish the main set with Gone Baby Gone. Tim invites some dancers on to stage and it’s thrilling to witness how a song that they had concerns about playing live has suddenly turned into an unexpected show-stopper and one that they’re happy to end the set with ahead of rather more obvious choices. The rigid structure of the recorded version has its chains cast aside and there’s space to improvise, for Andy to throw trumpet shapes across it wherever he pleases, Larry to add jagged guitar and for Jim’s threatening menacing bass to dictate the pace. Newcastle agrees with me wholeheartedly.

In a setlist full of right moves and perfect choices for the day, venue and crowd, Out To Get You opens up the encore and the sight and sound of grown men singing “what I need is you” arms outstretched to the stage en masse is something truly special and testament to the power and devotion that James can still generate. Larry’s guitar solo, followed by Saul’s violin solo, are so so beautiful, it’s impossible that they don’t melt your heart.

Moving On has spoken to so many people this year, its theme something that everyone can relate to, James fan or not, and like everything before it, it’d be impossible for someone who’s never heard James before to stand in this room and identify the new songs, such is the reaction they generate tonight. There’s people with their arms round each other singing every word like some sort of exorcism of the demons of loss – and it’s all wrapped up in probably their most radio-friendly song since the reunion.

Sometimes finishes off the set, mainly because you can’t really follow it tonight, and again it goes off in a different direction once you get past the middle eight. The crowd stop singing, the place becomes a cacophony of cheering and Tim simply tells the crowd that the band want to hear their version and steps back with the touchpaper firmly lit. 2,000 Geordies make as much noise as 8,000 Scousers and Glaswegians made at the weekend. The band come back in, improvising their way to a conclusion that’s different every night. They really should try to put something else at the end of the set, but have reached the same conclusion as the rest of us which is how could you create something this raw and powerful with any other song. James’ epitaph will be “sometimes when I look in your eyes, I swear I can see your soul” because that’s exactly what you get when you look James in the eye.

This was the best gig of the tour so far, the crowd the wildest when James played the hits, the most respectful of the quiet songs and of Tim when he went out into the crowd and they got the new songs and treated them like old favourites. Tim said they were the loudest on the last tour and they probably repeated the trick this time round.

Glasgow Hydro – 15th November 2014

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Setlist

Lose Control / Seven / Walk Like You / All Good Boys / Sound / Curse Curse / Laid / Hymn From A Village / All Im Saying / Quicken The Dead / Out To Get You / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Greenpeace / Stutter / Just Like Fred Astaire / Moving On / Gone Baby Gone / Come Home / Tomorrow / Born Of Frustration / Sometimes

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(Even The Stars)

Saturday night in Glasgow is no place for the faint-hearted and so James got (most of) their hits out for one of the biggest shows of the La Petite Mort tour.

The Hydro has garnered itself something of a bad reputation for sound since its opening last year, but there’s no real problems with the sound tonight where we’re stood is fine and the venue works in the sense that there’s a decent vantage point pretty much everywhere.

Tonight’s set is geared towards the Saturday night crowd. Whilst there’s still six songs from the new album and All Good Boys and Greenpeace retain their place, the rest of the set aims to generate a celebratory atmosphere rather than a listening crowd. This comes to a crux when Tim stops All I’m Saying because, despite requesting a few minutes silence so he can sing this song that’s very difficult for him because of the subject, the crowd don’t and he can’t carry on over the noise. It’s a shame that the crowd couldn’t respect that wish, but then it’s difficult to shut up eight thousand people for a few minutes when a large chunk of them have been on the lash all day.

The tone of the show is set by the opening Lose Control when Tim, Larry and Andy walk through the crowd. The venue layout doesn’t really lend itself to this working as the only seats that can access the route to the stage are not raised very high so most of the floor can’t see what’s going on. But they just take the song and make it their own almost drowning Tim out in the process. Seven has a sea of arms raised in unison and Walk Like You, with its many different sections and improvised outro keeps the atmosphere at fever pitch. All Good Boys surprisingly works in this environment, it feels made for these bigger stages, particularly as it builds to the five-voice crescendo at the end. It feels and sounds like a lost classic.

Sound has Tim musing on the fact that there’s something beautiful about men singing the “mah bah ooh” part of the song. Tonight it fills the hall, dark and rumbling, slightly menacing, lit up by stunning use of the backdrop and the big lighting rig. Curse Curse, which Tim later says he should have changed to “Maloney shoots and scores” in the presence of friend and Scotland manager Gordon Strachan, really turns the heat up, people losing themselves in a heady mix of the electronic vibes of the song, ferocious lighting and a hazy fog of alcohol. Tim goes crowd-surfing half way through the song as well yet still manages to hold everything together as he sings lying chest-down on a sea of arms. Laid has Tim down on the barrier again and helping a crowd surfer up on to the stage to dance with him. The reaction of the audience tells you why many bands see Glasgow crowds as one of the best to play to. Hymn From A Village hammers that point home as well.

Then things turn slightly sour with the All I’m Saying incident. Thinking about how often Tim went down into the crowd tonight, far more than he normally would, suggests that the distance and height from the crowd meant he was having trouble getting the connection he wanted. They play Quicken The Dead as an alternative and then it all gets forgotten as the venue is turned into a mass of waving arms as they go into Out To Get You, a song that’s been on quite a journey from its initial place on the Lose Control b-side to one of the band’s most loved songs and one that guarantees a fabulous reception whenever they play it. Getting Away With It, with Tim humming the intro section, has the whole place bouncing again and everything is forgotten.

Greenpeace looks and sounds stunning, but as Saul alluded to in the soundcheck, it does feel like it gets slightly lost in these big arenas. It’s not a song an audience can do a lot with given the contrast in pace and volume of the various sections except stand and stare at its sheer power. Stutter is a very different beast as it rumbles its way to its manic conclusion, bulldozing everything in its way.

Just Like Fred Astaire is simply jaw-droppingly beautiful, the song, more than any other, they’ve absolutely captured the essence of on this tour. Gorgeous swooping keyboard, vocals that enhance the expression of love apparent in the words. Moving On gets the warmest reception of all the new songs tonight, the sentiment touches most of the people in the room in some way and there must be a cathartic effect of thousands of people singing back to you something incredibly personal. Gone Baby Gone, once again, is the highlight of the new songs though and Tim helps another dancer up on stage for this one.

Come Home and Tomorrow finish the main set and see Tim back down in the crowd surfing, although some people get a bit too close and personal prompting him to ask if “the person who stole my penis can give it back”, a change from when someone stole his shoe at the Barrowlands in 1990. Come Home gets stretched out as Tim can’t sing because of the attention he’s getting so it loses its way a little as they scrabble to keep the song going, but they manage to rescue it.

Born Of Frustration sees them all stay on stage tonight and allows us to focus on the sheer power of the song without being distracted by people in different corners of the arena. It’s a song that drifts in and out of the setlist, but really was the calling card for the Seven album, especially when the crowd can participate in the hollering Indian call of the intro of the song.

They finish with Sometimes which almost descends into farce, they play the song with an interesting opening where Tim sings the first line without the band having started the song, the audience stops, are called back into action by Tim stomping his feet, prompting a sing-along section, but before the band can come back in the crowd stop singing and it doesn’t get carried into the mass celebratory communion it’s been on other nights. It’s one of the great things about having Sometimes at the end of the set, although the structure of it might be well-known to people, it’s never the same because of the crowd and how they take it.

All in all, a gig very much geared to the audience and the night of the week, but still enough in there that goes beyond what the casual fan of the band might know and expect from them. With concerns about the venue and Tim’s voice, which sounded in fine fettle despite issues with his throat over the past few days, it was the right set for the evening and the place, but hopefully we’ll see some changes this week.

Liverpool Echo Arena – 14th November 2014

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Setlist

Lose Control / Seven / Walk Like You / All Good Boys / Sound / Curse Curse / Laid / Hymn From A Village / All I’m Saying / Five-O / Quicken The Dead / She’s A Star / Greenpeace / Stutter / Just Like Fred Astaire / Moving On / Gone Baby Gone / Come Home / Born Of Frustration / Interrogation / Sometimes

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Review

(Even The Stars)

As James’ La Petite Mort tour reaches its first weekend, the size of venues grows as they enter arena territory starting at Liverpool’s Echo Arena. We watched them walk the tightrope between crowd pleasing hits and their desire to challenge their audience with curveballs and unusual song choices.

The Echo Arena is one of those cavernous, potentially soulless places so often frowned upon by music fans when their favourite band gets to the point where they have to play to audiences of this size. What transforms it though into something more intimate where there’s a connection between band and audience that so few can manage. What doesn’t help is the proliferation of people who you have to wonder why they forked out £40 to get off their tits on poppers all night and stand with their back to the band. But that’s James lot in these arenas and there’s moments tonight where you could have been in the smallest toilet venue in the country, such is the intimacy that some of the songs generate, helped by one of the most impressive sound set-ups we’ve heard in a venue of this size and decent sight lines throughout.

They start amongst their fans with Larry, Andy and Tim appearing at the back of the arena for a walkthrough the Level 1 seats for an acoustic version of Lose Control. Whilst it’s one of their most recognisible songs, it also sets the audience on edge a little, takes away their expectations of a bombardment of greatest hits played straight like so many that will have trodden this floor. Rather than head for the stage, Tim heads for the barrier as Seven strikes up, a beautiful rough extended opening section due to the time it takes to get back through the crowd. Thousands of arms are raised skywards as they reach the punchline of “love can mean anything”.

Walk Like You is again one of the highlights, that out section allowing the band to take the song off in a different direction yet again, brimming with so many ideas, as many in one song as many bands can fit on an album. They take the typical Jamesian route at this point of throwing in All Good Boys as a curveball. The song itself fills the hall, the fraility in parts of the original replaced by a building sense of forcing itself into your face and letting you know it’s around and had it got the release treatment it deserved at the time, maybe more would have known it.

Sound, Curse Curse and Laid are rapturously received. It still feels a bit strange when they play Sound mid-set because it naturally restricts some of their improvisational tendencies as it isn’t stretched to twelve minutes, but, having been out of the set for a while, they’ve worked on the arrangements and reinvigorated it. Curse Curse is an absolute blast and has the whole place dancing, singing and generally losing themselves in the fun and abandon of the song. This continues into its older brother Laid, the opening bars of Saul’s acoustic sending the whole place into delirium and Larry prowls the stage. Although less familiar to the now heaving mass, Hymn From A Village bears its fists and gets feisty, the scrappy upstart of its youth being replaced by something more likely to bulldoze your front door down and make itself at home.

They slow things down with a trio of All I’m Saying, Five-O and Quicken The Dead and the wide expanse of the venue doesn’t mean that the feeling and meaning of these songs are lost as Saul’s violin pierces the expectant atmosphere during Five-O as he, Jim and Larry congregate in a huddle and Tim laments the loss of his mentor and friend Gabrielle on All I’m Saying. The crowd’s reaction is, as you’d expect, mixed. The majority want to listen and take in this more poignant, beautiful side of James’ work, but there’s a few, that find themselves ridiculous, who want the big songs and nothing else.

She’s A Star serves to bring those dissenters back in line, before James take a step to the left field and unleash a quarter of an hour of white noise onto their unsuspecting audience. Greenpeace is nailed, that wild contrast between the two parts of the song and its final descent into chaos, illuminated by another wild light show. The crowd are a bit bemused around us, not sure what to make of it, not aware of this side of their work which blossomed around the Whiplash album. It goes beyond connection at an emotional level with this song, it’s a brutal violent assault on the senses. And then they follow it up with the killer blow which is Stutter. There’s probably not a song in the annals of music with a history like this one, thirty years old, never committed to a commercial release in studio form, but a song that can never die.

We then enter the home strait with a beautiful rendition of Just Like Fred Astaire, one of those James songs that was born at the wrong time for them commercially. It’s both unequivocally James, but also not like any other song they’ve done. The reaction Moving On gets is testament to how well La Petite Mort has been received, and Gone Baby Gone presses home the question of how has it not been chosen as a single so far. It’s not as polished live as the studio version, but it has all those traits of a James classic, punchy, sing-along and ripe for improvisation. They finish with Come Home and the whole place, including the now much worse for wear popper poppers, are joined as one.

The encore starts with Born Of Frustration, Andy appearing on the balcony playing trumpet next to a girl who looks around in vain for him before finally releasing with shock that he’s actually stood next to her. Tim appears the other side. These moments bring those people up in the gods into the show by taking it to them, but you don’t know where to look as Tim makes his way through the rows, Andy dances with random people and the rest of the band take the song and deliver new twists on it. Interrogation is a brave encore choice given the songs that have preceded it, but it’s a song that challenges its audience head-on, particular in the breakdown, where Larry improvises yet another different take on it.

Sometimes brings things to their inevitable conclusion. Tim goes out crowdsurfing into the standing area until he runs out of arms and is forced to turn back. It finishes with a chaotic singalong, in parts accapella, Tim’s reaction half-open mouthed in awe, half dancing. Larry tries some ill-advised vocal improvisation of “Liverpool’s soul” that no one else picks up on. They want to stay on and play another song, but are greeted by a chorus of boos when Tim tells us that they can’t because of the curfew, a rather flat way to end the evening and a bit harsh on the band to boo them.

These gigs are a bit of a conundrum for James, a balance between pleasing the masses that just want certain songs they heard on the radio against their natural will to play whatever takes their fancy and which another element of their fanbase would love to hear. They walk a fine line tonight, but on balance manage the rather clever trick of pleasing everyone, including the busker outside who unwittingly leads the exiting mass in a rendition of that song and filling his hat in the process.

Oxford O2 Academy – 10th November 2014

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This show was rescheduled from 10th July when it was originally planned as a warm-up for the Castlefield Bowl headline slot. It then became the opening night of the La Petite Mort tour. Support came from up-and-coming Stockport act Blossoms.

Setlist

Walk Like You / Quicken The Dead / Seven / All Good Boys / Interrogation / Hymn From A Village / Curse Curse / Laid / Vervaceous / Greenpeace / Ring The Bells / Gone Baby Gone / Come Home / Sometimes / Moving On / Out To Get You / Born Of Frustration / Just Like Fred Astaire

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(Even The Stars)
James opened their La Petite Mort tour with a sold out show at Oxford’s O2 Academy – an intimate venue compared to some of the arenas on the tour, but they still thrilled with songs from their latest album as well as a mix of greatest hits and a few rarities plucked from their enormous catalogue of songs. This Oxford date has been tagged onto the front of the tour as it was initially a warm-up for July’s Castlefield show that got cancelled because of Tim having a throat infection. As a result, it’s by far the smallest venue on the tour and that applies to the stage. As a result Saul is moved to the back to the stage to accommodate everyone whilst allowing Tim to dance and this becomes a running joke throughout the set, Tim quipping that he’s heading for the exit and hoping it’s not a sign at one point. They open with two songs from La Petite Mort – Walk Like You and Quicken The Dead – and what’s immediate, as it has been throughout the series of summer dates, is that these songs don’t need to make excuses for themselves of being new to justify their place in their set. There’s few songs like Walk Like You in James’ canon – you have to think Johnny Yen and Sound – that give them free reign to improvise so much without the song falling apart or sounding unnatural. It’s nine minutes long yet never feels like it outstays its welcome. Quicken The Dead is three minutes of beautiful triple-time quasi-waltz, not the most immediate live song on the record, but one that takes off its glasses, lets its hair down and turns into something quintessentially beautiful. It’s a theme that runs through the set that the new material never needs to shirk in the exalted company of its more successful and popular brethren. Interrogation, as Saul points out in the programme, is a song that makes your hairs stand up on the back of your neck, no more so when they go for the extended version of it as it appears on the record. Gone Baby Gone, once they get past a false start, has been turned into a joyful, playful romp-stomp with Tim swooping from the “love love love” to the “blah blah blah” middle eight section with the most wicked mischievous grin on his face. The two singles Curse Curse and Moving On have really captured the imagination of the James fan-base in the way that songs like Crazy and Look Away from the mini-albums and Whiteboy and Waterfall from Hey Ma, great songs that they are – never really did. We don’t even get the next single All I’m Saying, out next Monday, but then that’s just typical James isn’t it? For the die-hards, there’s three special moments where James delve into the darkest nooks and crannies of their back catalogue. Millionaires-era b-side All Good Boys is transformed spectacularly and ends in a crescendo of five voices in unison, the music dropped, singing “the river, the river runs through, from father to son to tender the bruise” Saul describes it as “fucking brilliant” and that it doesn’t matter that it’s a b-side. You do wonder what thought process made it one rather than some of the tracks off the second half of that album though. Vervaceous swoops, soars, drops and soars – it’s almost not a song rather a piece of music crafted from a jam, a piece of art rather than the more traditional song structures of their better known work. Greenpeace is marred by Tim’s second microphone not working, but it hardly matters as it turns into a cacophony of noise, flashing lights and menace. It’s not all about the new album and obscurities from the back catalogue though. Even though Tim tells a persistent heckler that this is the “No Sit Down tour because it needs a rest” there’s more than enough for those only acquainted with the Greatest Hits. Laid, set free in the first half of the set, is as rampantly daft and almost frivolous as ever, a whole bundle of fun as is Sometimes as Tim marvels at the crowd singing along with Andy. There’s no stopping the music to prompt the crowd, just everyone carried away in the emotion of the song. Tim exits the stage and walks on the bars and merch desk at the side of the venue for most of Come Home before swan-diving into the crowd as the band take the song off down improvised roads to its conclusion. Hymn From A Village sounds like a reborn song – the energy, taut chaos belying its thirty-two years. Out To Get You, with an elongated beautiful violin opening that has Tim holding back from starting the song to marvel at Saul’s work, does nothing to dampen the celebratory mood. Born Of Frustration threatens to blow the building apart such is its ferociousness whilst we’re sent home floating on the sea of love and joy that is Just Like Fred Astaire. What comes across more than anything tonight is just how well the band are connecting on stage, a telepathic feeling of understanding that allows them to bounce off each other, feed each other and it drives them off to squeeze new leases of life out of songs they’ve played hundreds of times before as well as reinvent songs they’ve just written. And this is just the start of the tour.

New York Webster Hall – 21st October 2014

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Setlist

Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Frozen Britain / Walk Like You / Waltzing Along / Sometimes / Jam J / PS / All I'm Saying / Moving On / Johnny Yen / Quicken The Dead / Curse Curse / What's The World / Hymn From A Village / Come Home / Tomorrow / Interrogation / Say Something / Born Of Frustration / Top Of The World

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BBC Maida Vale Studios – 10th October 2014

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Setlist

Moving On / Sometimes / Interrogation / Hymn From A Village / Walk Like You / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Come Home

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A live-to-air session on Lauren Laverne’s BBC Radio 6 Music show.

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Camp Bestival, Lulworth Castle – 1st August 2014

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Festival headline slot. James were joined by Johnny Marr on guitar for Come Home.

Setlist

Seven / Waltzing Along / Sit Down / Moving On / Interrogation / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Jam J / Top Of The World / Walk Like You / Hymn From A Village / Come Home / Curse Curse / Sound / Tomorrow / Sometimes / Laid

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