James - Stirling Tolbooth - 12th April 2013

James

Stirling Tolbooth

12th April 2013

James make a low-key but triumphant return to the live stage, debuting four new songs, throwing a few curveballs and finishing with some classics.

Stirling Tolbooth is the smallest venue James have played, and are likely to play, for a long time. Holding about 200 people it’s packed for this warm up for their tour with Echo and the Bunnymen that starts tonight in Glasgow.

In true James tradition, the opening night of the tour is always experimental, the weirdest and most unusual set you get to hear on a tour and tonight is no exception. There’s four new songs played, there’s some of the more obscure less well-known album tracks, an old b-side and, as it’s James and they get away with it, all messed up, the odd technical hitch. The set isn’t as flowing as it’ll be on the tour, but then that’s the beauty of these evenings.

Although there’s nothing pre-1990 in the set, we do get a mixture of songs from their catalogue since then. With a list of hits the length of your arm, you’re not going to hear everything, but we get a mix of songs from Gold Mother through to Hey Ma and four new songs, which whilst not necessarily having the sing-along choruses of some of their bigger hits, bode extremely well for the album the band are in the middle of writing and recording. They’re so new that Tim is reading the latest version of the lyrics from a sheet.

The sound in the venue isn’t really suited to a band with the set-up and power of James and it does sometimes take the edge off some of the louder and also the quieter numbers in the set. There’s a technical issue where the bass amp packs up before All In The Mind and we’re treated to an impromptu Lose Control with Andy on trumpet. That’s the real beauty of them, they deal with such issues effortlessly, there’s no recourse to just churning out hit after hit.

They played : Waltzing Along, Sound, Lost A Friend, Bubbles, She’s A Star, Quicken The Dead, Five-O, Interrogation, We're Going To Miss You, Space, Lose Control, All In The Mind, Moving On, Of Monsters And Heroes And Men, Born Of Frustration, Getting Away With It (All Messed Up), I Defeat, Say Something, Come Home and Sit Down

Dave Brown’s James website can be found at www.oneofthethree.co.uk and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/oneofthethree.  He will be tweeting from the tour at @oneofthethree

James official site is www.wearejames.com.