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8,000 tickets for this show sold in under half an hour, proof of the pulling power James still have in their hometown. On a fine summer’s evening James delivered a set covering the whole thirty years of their career from early Factory singles to songs from their latest and greatest La Petite Mort. We were also given a glimpse of Manchester’s future with an excellent opening set from Blossoms.
Castlefields is still baking in the unusually warm Manchester early evening sun by the time Blossoms take the stage, all dressed in black and determined to impress their biggest crowd to date. There’s a lot of bands doing the “psyche” scene at the moment, and whilst there’s some great bands on the darker fringes of it, there’s none doing the lighter shade better than Blossoms. They deliver a set of songs perfect for the setting and the weather – tracks like Urge and Madeleine as well as You Pulled A Gun On Me – show that they’re set for much bigger and better things. Vocalist Tom Ogden already has the voice and the confidence on stage and they’re an incredibly tight outfit for a band so early in their career. Remember the name.
You’d forgive James for coming out and playing a crowd pleasing hits set tonight – an alcohol fuelled crowd (less said the better of the pricks near us in shorts, white plimsolls and shades who decided that not listening to the band and pissing on the floor was a good idea), a celebratory atmosphere and issues with Tim’s voice that saw the cancellation of the warm-up gig in Oxford the previous night.
It’s James though. They start off slowly with Out To Get You, current single Moving On and a surprise resurrection of Seven album track Heavens. Unusually for this type of event, the sound is pretty decent and there’s no sign of the issues that caused concerns about whether the show would go ahead. Tim goes down onto the barrier for Heavens and almost gets dragged into the crowd.
The crowd raise their arms en masse as the intro to Ring The Bells kicks in, singing along every word in one great big Mancunian communion. Walk Like You ends in a typical Jamesian jam, on the verge of breakdown, chaotic and utterly thrilling, not just repeating the album note for note like so many bands do.
We’re then treated to a blast from the past. Two songs, both Factory singles, older than quite a bit of the crowd and the support band – What’s The World and Hymn From A Village – given a new lease of life, as fresh and vital as they were back then and a curveball move in an environment where the crowd are gasping for hits. Bitter Virtue, the one real curio on La Petite Mort, is another brave, but typical James choice. Over the chatter, it works surprising well in this environment.
Say Something gets an ecstatic reaction, people shut up and sing along. It’s one of those classic James singles, not their strongest song but one that unites a crowd and speaks to everyone. The backend of the set is choc full of these songs of unity – Sometimes, Getting Away With It, Come Home, Tomorrow, even Sound – that explain the lasting legacy of James and their ability to play this size of venue and sell tickets at a rate that the music press and media ignore because it suits their agendas.
We also get first single of La Petite Mort, Frozen Britain, a magnificently ramshackle romp of a song as well as album closer All I’m Saying (the setlist had Sit Down as an alternative in case Tim’s voice couldn’t get the higher notes, but there’s no such issue). An incredibly personal song about the death of a close friend, it’s transformed into a musical celebration of her life and Tim’s relationship with her, but it could apply to each and every one of us.
Sometimes ends in a wonderful communal singalong, when the crowd just pick the song up and run with it. It’s magical when it works like that, generations of fans as one and it’s picked up again later between the main set and first encore and to get them back for the second encore.
Curse Curse is hopefully the next single and is an absolute monster of a song. Driven along by a rampant dance undercurrent, it references Lionel Messi, voyeuristic sex in the next hotel room and tequila. Typical James in the sense it’s actually quite atypical of them.
After a frantic, bonkers Laid, the crowd refuse to go home, calling the band back one more time. Instead of the obvious, we get Johnny Yen, first released back in 1986, a lasting James anthem that has survived line up changes and keeps being revamped, reinvented and engrained in the hearts of the faithful. It’s a fittingly awkward close to events.
James’ first ever gig in Slovakia
Walk Like You / Frozen Britain / Come Home / Laid / Interrogation / Jam J / Out To Get You / Say Something / Moving On / Curse Curse / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Sometimes
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Johnny Yen / Come Home / Curse Curse / Jam J / Bitter Virtue / Walk Like You / Interrogation / Sometimes / Moving On / Laid / All I’m Saying
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An intimate launch show for La Petite Mort.
Une petite naissance pour la petite mort. James unveiled their majestic new album in an intimate sweaty sold-out show at London’s Electric Ballroom last night. We were there to see the premiere of the new songs and some old favourites.
For a band of James’ stature and with a back catalogue as rich as theirs presenting a new album is always a difficult business. They’re selling the size of venues they do on their history despite their current output standing toe to toe with their past, but they’re awkward, contrary buggers and they believe in the new material and tonight they present eight of the songs that make up La Petite Mort, out next Monday.
Most people are hearing these new songs for the first time and, although, it’s a dedicated crowd from all four corners of the UK and beyond, you can feel the love in the room for the new songs. Current single Moving On closes the set and sees the ballroom raise its arms as one and sing along. Next single Curse Curse ditches some of its supposed techno elements but is still a massive piece of guitar driven rock that you can dance to. Walk Like You, All I’m Saying and Interrogation are beasts of songs that threaten to hit you like a tsunami and leave devastation in their wake despite the subject matter being death and self-analysis. Frozen Britain is a raucous mess, jaunty, slightly lop-sided and crazily brilliant. Quicken The Dead encompasses delightful piano rolls and an impassioned vocal, which Tim explains is about making the most of every moment because death is just round the corner. Even Bitter Virtue, the most dreamy, delicate, fragile beautiful song on the album, holds its own even though you can tell they’ve not quite nailed how they want to do it live yet.
The rest of the set is primarily greatest hits based save for a rampant Johnny Yen and an electronic onslaught of Jam J. Laid sees Tim down on the barrier, Tomorrow is as breakneck rollercoaster as always. Waltzing Along has continued its resurrection, and even Say Something has benefitted from a rest and sounds rejuvenated. Come Home sounds as relevant and vital today as it did twenty five years ago. Sound and Sometimes, as ever, never fail to amaze, the former descending into an improvised jam and the latter being brought to an abrupt end and taken, without prompting, by the crowd and sung back at the band. Getting Away With It is almost the band’s anthem now and it’s stretched out and given a new lease of life as a result.
The house lights almost come back up, but they come out for a second encore. Tim has already told us about their experience of playing a 2 minute version of Sit Down earlier in the evening for The One Show, but they skirt the obvious and give us a beautiful rendition of Top Of The World. Saul’s violin, as it often does when he picks it up, steals the show.
There’s a great camaraderie about James on stage these days. They seem at one, connected to each other, laughing and joking at each other’s expense, connecting wonderfully when they start to improvise. They now have a magnificent new album to take to their audience and make them love it. Last night was a perfect start.
Read the review at Even The Stars.
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Sit Down / Oh My Heart / Curse Curse / Sound / Jam J / Come Home / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Laid
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Sound
Jam J
Out To Get You
Born Of Frustration
Moving On
Curse Curse
Five-O
Laid
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The Gathering Sound delivered a stunning anthology of James’ long musical career. It contained all the studio albums up to its release 13 years ago, plus many rarities and demos, a DVD, booklets, stickers and badges.
As well as four rarities and live discs, all the tracks from the following studio albums are included (and non-album tracks from the listed compilations) on a USB:
Rarities Disc: Willow / Say It With Flowers / Just Hipper / Mosquito / Left Out of Her Will / Doubts / Count Your Blessings / Weather Change / Pressure’s On / Jam 1 / Jam 2 / It’s a Fine Line / Hedex / Long To See / Scratch Card / I Thought You Were / All My Letters / Dust Motes
Live Disc: Folklore / Announcement / Burned / Hymn From a Village / Hang On / Maria’s Party / America / Sit Down / Sound / Honest Joe / Come Home / Johnny Yen / What For / Stutter / Fine / Bubbles / At The Seams
DVD – Come Home Live: Come Home / What’s the World / Whoops / Lose Control / Sunday Morning / Ring the Bells / Bring a Gun / Government Walls / Walking the Ghost / Next Lover / God Only Knows / What For / Sit Down / How Was It For You / Stutter
Vinyl: Sit Down / How Was It For You / Gregory’s Town / Ring Those Bells
| Release Name: | The Gathering Sound |
| Artist Name: | James |
| Release Date: | 10th December 2012 |
| Format: | Compilation Box Set |
| Catalogue: | B01G7OHLC2. Barcode: 602527531298 |
The Gathering Sound is a stunning anthology of James’ long musical career. It contains all the studio albums up to publication, many rarities and demos, a DVD, booklets, stickers and badges.
The studio albums are: Stutter, Strip-mine, Gold Mother, Seven, Laid, Wah Wah, The Best Of / Unhinged (Compilation), Millionaires, Pleased To Meet You, Fresh as a Daisy – The Singles (Compilation), Hey Ma, The Night Before, The Morning After
The music is spread over a USB back-catalogue, three CDs or rarities and live recordings, a DVD and 12″ Vinyl. All the studio albums are on a unique J-shaped USB stick apart from The Morning After The Night Before, which is on CD (as a single album as the US import version was).
Also included are a 6-page A5 booklet featuring personal contributions from each of the band members and those associated with the group, including One Of The Three curator Dave Brown.
There is a 12″ scrapbook featuring previously unseen and rare photos, memorabilia, cuttings and many other items straight out of James personal archives including a complete timeline of James’s career annotated by the band.
And finally postcards, badges and sticky satin replica backstage passes, all in a 12″ presentation box.
Not found on Spotify.
It’s James’ last gig of the summer, and, if the reviews are to be believed, they’ve got to go some to match their headlining performance at Kendal last weekend. The Stockton Weekender is a great little festival, nestled partly on a main road, partly on a grass area, next to the Tees in the town centre. It has the rather clever idea of having two stages next to each other with bands alternating. The rest of the line up is quite interesting, particularly local heroes Cattle and Cane and soon-to-be-huge Jake Bugg.
James take to the stage around 8.20 and it’s clear that they mean business from the start. Despite Tim’s tease about playing a mellow set, they start with a trio of singles Born Of Frustration, Waltzing Along and Seven that the Tuborg-enhanced crowd lap-up. Even Waltzing Along, not my favourite James song by any stretch, feels right, but that’s probably due to how much Tuborg I’d been enhanced by. The sound where we’re stood is a million miles away from last week’s poor show at Margate and you feel the band want to end their 2012 gig run on a bang.
It’s not just the singles that steal the show though. Ring The Bells is flanked by Waterfall at the front and Medieval at the back, two songs with over 20 years between them, but which feel as essential a part of James’ canon of work as the singles. And they sound magnificent too, Andy’s opening trumpet salvo on Waterfall being sung later in the evening along Stockton High Street. Noone else joined in, but it’ll catch on one day. Johnny Yen gets its usual rapturous response and Tim namechecks Amy Winehouse and Janis Joplin.
Out To Get You calms the mood down slightly, although Tim reprimanding security does little to alleviate some of the more boisterous areas of the moshpit. It’s followed by another song off Hey Ma, Oh My Heart, which sees thousands of people arms raised in unison. That’s James beauty – songs about loneliness and paranoia, songs about needing to have your heart broken for it to be opened to something better , songs sung by a man who doesn’t look or live like his audience all brought together by six other guys in a way that engenders celebration. There’s not a song tonight that doesn’t work.
Sound is as dark and broody as ever, Tim’s calling on both his mother and father’s spirits, whilst the cacophony of sound goes on around him. It’s brought back down by a truly gorgeous acoustic Just Like Fred Astaire, which pierces through the dark, heavy atmosphere. Dust Motes, dedicated to the Daisy Chain group, is equally as beautiful, and it’s surreal to hear hundreds of people singing “if you die” full pelt as the song takes off.
Demonstrating yet another side, Jam J starts with Larry vocally encouraging Jim to let loose. People not familiar with it probably don’t know what to make of the stuttering stop-start bassline that dominates the song.
It’s more familiar territory to close the evening. Come Home is as sprawling, rampant and all over the place as it’s ever been. Sometimes has Tim on the barrier and everyone singing along to the chorus, and it feels like you can see his soul as he takes in the scene in front of him. Getting Away With It is now a regular set ender and fits the role perfectly.
There’s no encore ritual as time’s running short, but Tim jokingly says that the crowd need to pretend they’ve gone off, applaud whilst the band come back on modestly and very English. He then offers the crowd a choice of the last song, between Sit Down and Laid. The choice of latter prompts Tim to tell us that “he likes us motherfuckers” and that it’s a very cool choice for an English audience. Laid is as utterly bonkers as ever, squeezing the last ounces of energy out of the crowd. And then it’s over.
It’s telling tonight that every single album, except The Night Before, has at least one track aired from it. Whether that’s conscious or not, it stakes James claim, as we reach 30 years since that spindly, unique three-track debut on Factory, to be lauded by the music industry and press for their longevity and brilliance in the same way many lesser bands are fawned over. Obviously, it won’t happen, but with a new album hopefully on the way, and despite the great shows of the last few months they need a new album, the future still looks bright for James.