James warmed up for their Neighbourhood Weekender headline slot on Saturday with an intimate sweaty warm-up show at Edinburgh’s Corn Exchange. Mixing tracks from last year’s number one album Yummy and tracks from the albums that preceded it with some of their biggest hits they delighted a Scottish crowd that took some to get going but which finished one joyful bouncing mass.
Taking to a stage that had been bathed in yellow light in tribute to John Soapy Soutar, one of the long-term leading lights on the fan group James Fanzone Scotland and a much-loved member of that and other communities. Tim, Andy and Dave are also dressed in yellow, although Tim does later question the wisdom of having chosen a thick hoodie as the Corn Exchange becomes a sweltering mess with two thousand bodies in it. Both Way Over Your Head and Moving On are dedicated to him to huge cheers from the crowd, many of whom are friends and have also decked themselves in yellow to mark his passing.
They open with She’s A Star before most of the first half of the set focuses on their more recent output. The glorious Way Over Your Head ends with a soaring refrain where the instruments drop out and most of the band aided by a choir from the crowd create a moment of uplifting communion. Leviathan, their most streamed song of recent times and testament to their enduring ability to write anthemic songs with choruses that connect (allied like Life’s A Fucking Miracle to radio-unfriendly lyrics), follows. Tim comes down to the barrier for the first time and wisely, given a nasty bout of food poisoning, decides not to crowdsurf tonight.
Ring The Bells and Five-O are on more familiar territory for those looking for the James of old, both having sections where the band shed new light on old favourites, the latter starting with a long violin part from Saul and which survives some on-stage sound issues to blossom into an extended improvisation. The nine-piece Laid shows in America promise to be something special and hopefully something we can witness this side of the Atlantic.
The US is referenced in the welcome return of Heads, a song about the “fuckery going on in America.” The initial percussion at the start of the song is replaced by hand clapping that the audience is encouraged to participate in before it evolves into a hard-hitting beast of a song, all sharp edges before stopping abruptly in a blaze of stuttering lights that fit the song perfectly.
Shadow Of A Giant is glorious, starting with Chloe sat at the front singing over the string-laden opening while Tim sits at the back on Debbie’s drum-riser and it’s followed by the “apocalyptic love song” Better With You which is the closest James have come to a duet between Tim and Chloe.
Say Something was referenced in the Q&A soundcheck as a song they don’t play as often as they should because it’s quite simple and straightforward compared to many they’ve released, but there’s a magic to the way Tim simply holds the mic out not even trying to compete with the volume at which it’s being sung back to him, preferring to stand and witness its enduring powerful connection.
Stay is introduced with a story of how Coldplay’s Chris Martin told Tim that they’d got the arrangements on it wrong and redid them. Pushing the chorus forward in the song and making it more prominent throughout makes it feel more like a single than an album track - and possibly explains why Coldplay’s trajectory took off in a way that James, who they cite as a massive influence, didn’t in the same way post Sit Down.
Moving On starts with some beautiful interaction between Jim’s bass and Saul’s violin, influenced by the orchestral version of the song and it feels particularly poignant tonight given the celebration of one of their fans’ life.
Honest Joe is a seven minute rollercoaster of a song that some around us don’t quite know what to make of. Lots of rumbling bass, about turns, megaphone-enhanced vocals and improvised structures from their Wah Wah album that accompanied Laid, it’s a magical journey that peels back the shiny veneer of their singles into the more creative parts of their collective brain.
From then on in, sensing the crowd are ready for it, James bulldoze their way through many of their best-loved songs, stopping to add little twists to the likes of Tomorrow and Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) to keep them fresh and alive. Laid is met with a huge roar of appreciation and the crowd sing the first verse before the band do. Where once there would have been pandemonium at the front, it’s now a sea of cameras trying to capture the moment, where the moment used to be the abandonment of senses in a communal moshpit.
Sensing the mood they finish the main set with Come Home, a song that’s endured for thirty-six years now, and documents one of the reasons for James’ survival over that time in the way they’ve almost abandoned its structure and let it become free form to allow it to evolve. Where other bands’ oldest hits feel like going through the motions, James veer in the opposite direction.
The original encore is short, just two songs initially with Beautiful Beaches kicking its way into view amongst the monolith greatest hits around it, a song born in the wrong time for chart success but which gets a reaction no less powerful from the crowd than what’s around it. Sometimes ends, as is tradition, with the audience, reticently at first, taking the chorus and singing it back to the band.
The night finishes with Sit Down, a song the Scottish Tory leader of the time once berated them for not playing at a show in Edinburgh. “You’ve earned it” Tim tells us, sensing the energy in the room that he’s clearly fed off and been helped through the illness with for ninety minutes. It starts with just Mark’s keyboards through the first verse and chorus before Dave’s drums crash in and the song erupts into glorious life and sends the Edinburgh crowd out into the night ecstatic at a gig where James got the balance spot on between new and old, familiar and less familiar material and reminded everyone just how ecstatic and uplifting their shows can be.
James played She’s A Star, Way Over Your Head, Leviathan, Ring The Bells, Five-O, Heads, Shadow Of A Giant, Better With You, Say Something, Stay, Moving On, Honest Joe, Laid, Getting Away With It (All Messed Up), Tomorrow, Come Home, Beautiful Beaches, Sometimes and Sit Down
James' official website can be found here. They are on Facebook and Twitter. Some of the band - Tim, Andy and Dave - are also on Twitter.
We also run the One Of The Three James archive, the most detailed resource for information about the band, and the site also has a Facebook and Twitter page.
TimBoothLyricADay, whose posts often lead to Tim explaining his thought processes behind the lyrics, can be found on Twitter and Facebook
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