Frozen Britain / Say Something / Ring The Bells / Walk Like You / Moving On / Born Of Frustation / Sometimes / Jam J / Top Of The World / Johnny Yen / Interrogation / Curse Curse / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Laid / Come Home / Tomorrow
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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.
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.
Johnny Yen, Oh My Heart, Ring The Bells, Come Home, Curse Curse, Sit Down, Stutter, PS, Getting Away With It (All Messed Up), Tomorrow, Laid
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Oh My Heart / Born Of Frustration / Sit Down / Curse Curse / Johnny Yen / Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) / Tomorrow / Laid / Come Home
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Getting Away With It (All Messed Up)
Come Home
Tomorrow / Sound / Moving On / Top Of The World / Laid
Johnny Yen / Waltzing Along / Curse Curse / Sit Down / Sometimes / Laid
Interview with Tim
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James fans have long demanded a forest gig. Thoughts of a triumphant sort of homecoming at Delamere afforded to some of the city’s other favourite sons would rank up there with their other live highlights. Instead we’re afforded a damp Thursday evening in a beautiful forest in the middle of Norfolk (or is it Suffolk, I can never work out where Thetford is). This is reflected in a disappointing poor turnout, particularly as the rain clouds hit the area early evening when wavering punters would have been making last minute decisions.
Such things have never worried James though. They start off with a trio of more familiar hits – Waltzing Along, Ring The Bells and a drawn-out elongated version of Sound. Tim states they want to mix it up a bit from the recent April tour, hence the reappearance of Ring The Bells and Tomorrow later on in the set. Waltzing Along benefitted from a rebirth in April and it still sounds revitalised from the more tired versions of previous years. Sound stops and then starts again at the end with the band going into a free-form improvisation that takes the song to over ten minutes. The magical thing about James is that they resist the urge to just regurgitate their best-known material and rest on their laurels.
Tim’s on good form, joking that there’s no violin for the next song which is Five-O from the Laid album. Saul Davies’ violin is a much underused weapon in James’ armoury, but not on this song. It drifts through the night air as the beautiful extended intro builds into the main body of the song. Laid is twenty years old in October, but you’d never get tired of hearing songs like this especially when they breeze such new life into them with regularity. Next up is the equally wonderful Of Monsters And Heroes And Men from their 2008 Hey Ma album.
We then get the first new song of the evening called Let Us Die, which seems to be continuing the theme of the new songs about death, loss and changing situations with lyrics enquiring about how to “put this vehicle in reverse” and talking of “all we used to know”. It’s still a work in progress, but it sounds extremely promising for the first time it has been played to an audience.
They go back to the more familiar for How Was It For You? which gets people dancing, but rather than settle into a row of hits, they go back to another track from Hey Ma. I Wanna Go Home is almost them showing off. What’s a relative simple plaintive song on the album is transformed into a monster live. It starts off all unassuming with Tim half singing half whispering before kicking into an extended end section where Tim holds a note for over a minute whilst the other six create an ascending cacophony of noise before descending back into almost quiet reflection.
Speaking of cacophony, Stutter is the song that should define it. This song appeared on their first demo tape in 1982 and was the first aborted mix of the Strip-Mine album five years later, but as yet it hasn’t made a release in studio form. They’d be foolish to think of recreating it in that environment. It finishes with three of them playing drums, Tim on keyboards and Saul playing Larry’s white guitar with a drumstick whilst strobe lights fly around the arena.
Back to the more familiar. Seven, which was ignored pretty much after Alton Towers in 1992, has found its way back into favour, even opening up their first show back in 2007. Similarly, Just Like Fred Astaire, like most of Millionaires, went through a phase of being excluded from set-lists despite it being a fan favourite. Tim goes out to the barrier and sings most of the song perched on it with only the strong arm of one of the crowd for support.
The second new song Curse Curse is a bit more immediate. Tim has his lyrics on his Ipad, Saul jokes that he has a distinct advantage over the rest of them and that they may end up looking like dickheads. It’s a typically brave James move unveiling new songs in venues like this. The song itself is driven by a pounding drumbeat with flourishes of trumpet and has a hook line of “praise the lord and kiss me on the mouth” and, like the best of James’ back catalogue, it feels like there’s three or four songs all fighting to burst out of one. At the end Tim tells us that it’ll be amazing once we get to know it. It already feels like it could be a special song, even amongst the seven they’ve now previewed from the album they start recording on Monday.
The final new song is Moving On. It’s the most immediate obvious radio song that they’ve done since they got back together in 2007. It’s ostensibly about the death of Tim’s mother, but it could be interpreted as a song about someone making drastic changes of any sort in their life with lyrics such as “now my bags are packed and my sails are tied and my course is marked by stars”.
Johnny Yen is James in one song. It endures because it’s forever changing. It’s transformed from a simple four minute song from their debut album into a sprawling nine-minute partly improvised beast. It never sounds the same twice as well.
The set is completed by a trio of their best known and most popular hits. Tomorrow is one of those three-and-a-bit minute nuggets of indie-guitar perfection that they knocked out with alarming regularity in the 1990s. Sit Down has been reclaimed from daytime radio as an anthem to be proud of rather than to hide away in the cupboard. It joins everyone in unison singing along bringing a sense of community into the forest. It also has a wonderful piece of improvisation by Mark on where he brings the song back up unexpectedly with his keyboards and the others join in. They finish the main set with a lop-sided elastic Come Home, a song that doesn’t ever feel like it’s aged despite being older than some of the crowd around me.
The encore is in similar vein. Saul jokes that the first one is another new one, but it’s Getting Away With It (All Messed Up). The song has almost become their anthem despite it only being a minor hit on release in 2001. It’s the one song that you couldn’t imagine them not playing now. The evening is brought to a conclusion by Sometimes and Laid. I’d bemoaned the fact that this has finished their set for the past few years and had become a bit predictable, but they’ve ditched the insistence on trying to get the audience to sing along with Sometimes, letting it happen naturally when the crowd takes it, and it feels alive and vibrant again and a fitting way to finish a two-hour set of the hits, the obscure and the new.
Whilst this wasn’t the best gig they’ve done this year and the crowd was disappointing in size, they’re still streets ahead of their more critically acclaimed contemporaries that are milking the reformation cow dry without delivering anything tangible in terms of either new material or fresh takes on their classic back catalogues.
The evening is opened up by the magnificent Frazer King. They appear, although I didn’t get it confirmed when Nathan jumped me half way through James’ set, to have undergone a line-up change. They’d been invited by James to support them and Larry has been involved with the production of their forthcoming album. As ever, they come across as fairly shambolic and controversial, but that, in its own perverse way, is their charm. Nathan chides people for getting offended by their lyrics before a song questioning the roots of religion. I’m not quite sure what the seated visitors to the forest made of them as this isn’t their natural environment, but they’re progressing to sounding like a damn fine band.
James completed a sold-out ten date tour of the UK with a show at Manchester’s MEN Arena last night. We were there to witness a triumphant homecoming of a band looking backwards to move on with old favourites and future classics.
James are a band that don’t play by traditional rules. Dismissed ridiculously in some quarters as one-hit wonders (nineteen top forty singles), they can still achieve top 10 albums (Hey Ma) that elude most of what the industry horribly describe as “heritage” bands without any substantial record company support and play to 15,000 crowds in their hometown and sell out a tour in the rest of the UK.
They could take the easy route tonight and just play hit after hit and Manchester on a Friday night would melt in their arms. But, as when they toyed with the precipice of mega-stardom when they were the biggest band in the UK for twelve short months between the success of Sit Down and their 30,000 capacity live on Radio One show at Alton Towers in 1991/2, tonight they take the long winding route of musical integrity, improvisation, songs so new that Tim needed lyric sheets for one that makes them simply the most thrilling and unpredictable live band in the country.
Of the 21 songs they played, 12 were hit singles, enough for the casual fan and with some inspirational sing-alongs in there, but there’s two new songs, Interrogation and Moving On, which with familiarity will rank alongside those hits when they get released in 2014, the as yet unreleased in studio form Stutter which dates back to 1981, Fire So Close from their debut EP, two songs from Hey Ma (Of Monsters And Heroes And Men and I Wanna Go Home) which show that they can still write music that moves the body and the soul and other choice album tracks from their phenomenal back catalogue. Songs like Ring The Bells, Tomorrow and Say Something, which would form a career highpoint for the majority of the hip-and-trendy indie-by-numbers pedalled by the NME aren’t needed.
Tim Booth is the obvious star in the band and the focus of most of the adulation of the crowd. His boundless energy, shamanic trance-like dancing, starting Lose Control up in the level one seats, his engagement with the audience to the point tonight of walking on the shoulders of the front few rows during Just Like Fred Astaire, his continued look of genuine amazement at the response from the audience and his voice, which like fine wine has matured with age allowing him to hold notes longer than some bands’ songs, all make him one of the most unique, unmissable frontmen in the business.
James always have, and always will be, about more than Tim though. Larry Gott’s guitar work, so missed during his absence in the late 90s, simply takes the breath away as he improvises sections of songs, even those from the period when he was absent. Saul Davies, on violin and guitar, is the agitator in the band, that unpredictable spark that drives the band and his violin playing, in particular, takes songs like Laid’s Five-O into places you wouldn’t go at a rock concert. He laughs and jokes with Tim and the audience throughout. Andy Diagram prowls the stage with his trumpet adding flourishes and breathing new life into songs from across the back catalogue. The whole thing is underpinned, without playing down their contributions, by Jim Glennie on bass, Dave Baynton-Power on drums and Mark Hunter on keyboards, all essential parts of creating that framework for the others to paint on.
There’s points in the set where you see the chemistry that makes them so exciting on stage. Tim playfully prods Larry at one point when he’s in an improvised section of a song, at various points two, three or four of the band will come together, look each other direct in the eyes and drive each other on to do something out of character, something different which will make that version of that particular song different tonight from any other night. Manchester loves the hits obviously. Sit Down ends up as a ten-minute communal sing-along when the band stop playing – the Comic Relief sketch that used it appears to have convinced them that it’s not a song to be ashamed of but to love, celebrate and cherish. And that’s exactly what it is. There’s not a more engaging group call to arms and celebration of togetherness in the annals of the musical history of this great city
Sometimes has a crowd versus choir sing-off, Come Home has 15,000 people hollering Tim’s tale of self-loathing back at him as a form of catharsis and Laid starts off with the song played slowed right down with Tim being drowned out before descending into a riot with stage invasions including Peter Kay with a guitar as they start again hell for leather.
James are a one-off. Bands don’t sound like them or get compared to them, basically because they’re incomparable. Criminally, they’ve never had that critical acclaim reserved for the likes of many of their peers, because they refuse to play by those traditional rules that the industry dictates and because, in a world where fame and money is king, they’re all about the music and that connection it makes between band and audience. The only way they can be sure of challenging their audience is by challenging themselves. This wasn’t a gig, this was a life experience to a soundtrack of love and fear and hate and tears.
The penultimate show of the tour and you have to wonder how James will surprise us tonight. After eight hot shows on the run, it’s a challenge to keep it fresh and exciting, both for band and audience, but as you know James are no ordinary band.
They start with a trumpet and guitar led version of Lose Control, making its first appearance of the tour proper. Stripped back and shorn of its keyboard underpinnings, it’s the perfect start, the crowd singing along to a dark tale of love and despair. Waltzing Along is as vibrant and fresh as it’s ever sounded before, the rockier treatment lifting it out of that “James by numbers” accusation that you could possibly level at some of those 97/8 singles. How Was It For You starts with that calling card riff that announced James to the world of the pop charts and finishes with Tim bellyflopping onto the audience after singing most of the song on the barrier. Birmingham has surrendered faster than their football teams on a Saturday afternoon.
Sound is dark, moody, brooding and threatening. Tim prowls the stage like a demented banshee, challenging his bandmates to do something out of character. Interrogation is showing signs of developing into something that can have that impact on the set, Tim going into a trance-like dance half way through as the instruments drop before the end section which you could imagine being put to a dubstep background and still making perfect sense. There’s not enough superlatives to describe just how good that violin then violin/trumpet opening to Five-O is for a ten-date tour, nor for Larry’s guitar work in the main body of the song.
Say Something is another song that makes its first appearance of the tour proper and it’s the one disappointment. It’s a great singalong single, but either it doesn’t have the structure that allows them to do something too different with it or it’s suffered from familiarity or overplay. The crowd love it, but it feels like it needs to be rested or reborn.
Sit Down is as wild and crazy as it’s been every night. The crowd at one point are singing two different parts of the song, which is quite bizarre but actually sums up everything this tour is about – never the same, always changing, never predictable. Top Of The World, thrown in mid-set is a case in point. After the excitement of Sit Down, there’s a lot of chatter as the song starts, but by the time Saul picks up his violin and plays the most incredible solo, noone’s talking. Tim stops them going into the next song to tell the audience that this is why he loves the band so much, not knowing who’s going to improvise what next and that anyone can take control of a song and take the others with them. This was the 200th time I’ve seen them and he summarised exactly what makes this band so great in a couple of sentences.
English Beefcake and She’s A Star are challenging songs for Tim’s voice, which is slightly croaky after two weeks of two hours a night, but you don’t notice him missing any of the high notes of each of the songs. Beefcake, like Five-O before it, demolishes the myth that James are a band with one massive hit single and a back-up canon of not quite so singalong singles and not a lot else. They can afford to leave songs like Ring The Bells and Tomorrow out of the set and they not be missed by all those, except the idiot who the other night determined the gig was worth only two stars because they didn’t play his favourite song.
Moving On is the ultimate proof that James are not a heritage band, as is the current vogue phrase, they’re making exciting new music that stands comparison with the whole of their back catalogue. You know in another world it’d be a massive hit, in the current environment it’ll hopefully reawaken people to James in a way the radio singles off Hey Ma and the mini albums, great as they are, never quite managed.
The end section sees James get their big guns out. We’re Going To Miss You is dedicated to a gentleman in the audience who wrote to Tim about how the song was a spell against his cancer. Born Of Frustration turns the heat up in the venue even further as total strangers unite in yodelling the opening section. Come Home is as wild as ever, lurching, prancing from section to section. Sometimes seals the deal, but as it stops there’s no singalong, there’s no attempt by the band to start one, but as they leave the stage the crowd do start to sing the refrain back and continue to do so whilst the band do what they do backstage and when they come back on, they pick up where they left and improvise an end section. What had become so predictable with that song since 2008 became something different, and again different from what had happened elsewhere on the tour.
As Johnny Yen starts up, the young couple that had pushed their through to stand next to me (obviously there was a gap, they didn’t push just to stand next to me) sing along to every word of a song that was written before both of them were born and that noone would ever have told them was cool. I’d noted before Getting Away With It has been struggled to have that same vibrant effect as it usually has and tonight it’s slightly flatter too. This isn’t a criticism of the song though, just how much everything around it has been raised. Laid to finish proves this, there’s the first two verses played slowly with Larry’s acoustic leading, the audience singing back every word before all hell is let loose and we get the whole song at breakneck speed.
It’s hard to compare these gigs to each other, but this was up there with Newcastle as my favourite of the tour so far. Onto Manchester tonight and the hometown gigs are always a conundrum given the size of the venue and the expectations of that number of people.
After the ridiculously long journey to Leeds (not sure why we couldn’t have stopped off in Birmingham tonight and done Leeds on Thursday) from Bournemouth, the Academy is absolutely rammed to the point where there’s actually no room to get a decent spot to see and dance unless you got in at doors.
The upside to this is that there’s a massive expectant atmosphere when the band make it to the stage at nine. Tim’s almost drowned out by the crowd on Waltzing Along as the pit ends up as one heaving mass which continues through Seven, How Was It For You and Sound. Tim comes out and stands on the barrier in a couple of places during How Was It For You and you think at one point he’s going to dance full-on whilst perched precariously over the crowd. Tim’s thrown a St George’s Cross which he places near Saul’s monitor
Where we’re stood, Interrogation and Five-O are affected by chatter and gutteral tribal football chants. Interrogation is going to be fascinating recorded, they’re still tweeking it and it goes into sonic areas they’ve never been in before in the end section. Even the weareleeds brigade are silenced though by Larry’s breathtaking guitar work on Five-O, which follows the now familiar but never astonishing violin and trumpet extended intro. Just Like Fred Astaire is shorn of the drama of Tim going down into the crowd, but is sung back by almost every one of the 2,000 devotees in the building.
Whiteboy has a new opening section and gets a great reception. It’s the first of three Hey Ma songs tonight and it’s pleasing to see how much of the crowd know them.
There’s so much already been said about Sit Down on this tour, but again tonight it’s hard not to talk about it. Rather than a tired runthrough with the obligatory singalong at the end or an unusual take on it to throw it in and get it out of the way, there’s no shame in exactly what it is, one of the defining songs of the early 1990s. It goes up and down, Tim stood on the monitors conducting the audience who need no encouragement to turn it into seven minutes of delirium as the band improvise their way through the last half of it.
Then we get the first performance of a new song. From what Tim says it’s about the death of Gabrielle Roth. It starts slowly and builds with a beautiful “I’m talking to noone” under a very understated keyboard backing into a chorus which talks of births and graves, a theme that runs through a lot of records. It ends with some effects on Tim’s voice as he finishes with “see you next time”. It feels like it’s still work in progress, but there’s the seeds of a great song in there on first listen.
The duo of Of Monsters And Heroes And Men and I Wanna Go Home that finish off Hey Ma make a potent combination together live in the set and you have to have no soul not to be impacted by them. Monsters has that beautiful haunting opening and build into a dark brooding story and I Wanna Go Home has that James knack of turning a dark song into a celebration, Tim holding that high note for longer than any man should be able to.
It’s then hits all the way to the end of the set. She’s A Star has been revisited since it was last played on the tour and has lost the slow keyboard build up and has been rocked-up and sounds quite fierce. Moving On, although unreleased, will be a single, Saul tells us probably in 2014, and sounds every bit a potential surprise hit, should the industry get its cards in line and actually promote it. It has that immediate singalong chorus you won’t get out of your head and a tune that won’t let your feet stand still.
There’s some confusion at the start of We’re Going To Miss You as to when to start so Tim takes time to tell the story of the song whilst taking the mickey out his bandmates. It’s good to see that on-stage relationships seem so strong at the moment as they approach the recording of the album and a potentially big year next year.
Born Of Frustration and Come Home close the main set. Tim ends up on the barrier again for the former whilst half the crowd try (badly) to imitate the yodel. Come Home sees Larry improvising new guitar parts that add an even more fierce furious flourish to it. Leeds hardly notice as they’re too busy bouncing, flailing their arms and hollering it back to Tim.
Johnny Yen, again not a hit single but should have been, starts the encore and is welcomed like a long lost friend. It’s middle breakdown section is again different from how it has been on previous nights, a sign that this is a band operating at the peak of its powers.
Sometimes again is revitalised. It’s had three years of holding up the set with a predictable singalong section before jumping into Laid. It still has the singalong section, and by god Leeds SING it back at them, but it feels like anyone can pick up an instrument and lead it. There’s a point where five of them are in a line, almost ignorant of the existence of the other four, but in perfect time with them.
And Laid, well they start it slow, go through two verses of it as a communal singalong, before Tim gets the men in the crowd to sing the high-pitched part, before Larry triggers pandemonium by starting the song again, but this time as the raucous three minute bundle of fun that it is.