The room is already pretty full by the time Doves make it to stage, and nearly completely by the time they leave, partly due to some horror stories about the length of time it took the venue to get people in. What they missed was a forty-five minute set from a band with enough stone-cold classics, and then some, to reel off one after the other.
Doves are, as has been well-documented, in a strange sort of limbo with frontman Jimi Goodwin currently unavailable for live duties. The other two founder members, brothers Jez and Andy, have taken on the mantle, like the ever-evolving headliners, believing the the band and what they stand for is more than the sum of the people who make it up. It isn’t exactly the same of course for those who know the back story, how could it be, but the two of them step up and deliver the likes of Words, Pounding, Kingdom Of Rust, Cedar Room, Black And White Town and There Goes The Fear with the joy and spirit that has always been at the core of the band. This is most evident when Jez delivers a scathing condemnation of the protesters in town earlier in the day.
Manchester gets a special bonus at the end as they roll back time to the days of The Hacienda, morph into Sub Sub and leave us with an ecstatic Spaceface. For five minutes the Coop is transformed into a warehouse rave before they depart with the roar of the arena in their ears and hopefully a few thousand new converts.
As the arena lights go out, the screen is lit up by the text of a spoken-word monologue about AI and how people are being controlled. It stops in its tracks and Saul leads the band onto stage to deafening roars with the violin intro to Five-O, one of the real highlights of this whole arena tour. His violin playing defines much of the song, save for Tim's lyrics, and there's a point where his front man is so mesmerised by it that he simply stands facing himself, losing himself in a trance-like state dancing.
Waltzing Along follows and sees Tim address the Manchester crowd - "hello home town" - before complimenting the venue on its sound and hoping for the "same astonishing results" as their previous visit in 2024 when they were the first artist to play to the venue's full capacity. He's then down on the walkway that takes up the space between the stage and the barrier making his connection with the crowd, whether it be regular barrier huggers or those who are there for the first time and a simple touch of the hand makes their day/year/life.
I Know What I'm Here For is next up, a song built for James' first foray into arenas back around the time of the original Best Of in 1998 and one that fits perfectly into James 2026. Tim improvises at the end, changing the "la la la la" lyric to "blah, blah, blah, blah."
They then hit hard and early with Sit Down, a version that manages to combine every single take on it they've done from the tour in one. It starts with Dave's big drum intro, by the second verse it's acapella then the big chorus and then Tim crowdsurfing over the front quarter of the standing area as twenty four thousand people sing the chorus. There's so much going on that it could all collapse under its own weight, but in reality it epitomises everything about James in one rendition of their best-known song.
Typically James they then head off on a diversionary path rather than taking the easy option of following hit with hit - and they have enough in their back pocket to do so that don't get an airing tonight. Heads, which Tim describes as being about the "disunited states and inherent racism" is a apocalyptic coming together of three sets of drums (Chloe takes to a single drum on the riser) and strings (Saul and Adrian), that belies its status as an album track to transform itself into an impressive arena-ready monster, complete with accompanying lighting and on-screen imagery. Zero is introduced as a song of "hard truths from a happy band", a personal favourite of theirs that made it onto the recent Nothing But Love Definitive Best Of, and is the most challenging point of the night for such a huge audience where familiarity might be an issue. The response though is huge.
Tim's then off walkabout, the layout of the arena and difficulty in moving between floors around the building meaning that he doesn't venture up into the seats, but along the side of the floor space, stopping at the accessibility area as Say Something strikes up and the band is swelled by a chorus of thousands as one of James' simpler songs becomes another moment of communion in an evening that's full of them. There's a moment of concern as Jim stops them starting the next song due to an issue in the crowd that's thankfully resolved quite quickly.
Born Of Frustration has Tim heading back from where he came, making it to the stage as Andy heads down to the barrier as the song's standout trumpet line fills every corner of the huge venue. The Coop had many teething problems when it opened a couple of years ago, but the quality of its acoustics has never been in doubt and for a band like James with so much going on it adds a lot to the experience.
Shadow Of A Giant is augmented by those acoustics, the interplay in Chloe and Tim's vocals in the opening section crystal clear as the music swirls around them. They move down to the barrier, the band's bouncer holding Chloe's hand on the way down and Tim doing it on the way back up, just one of a lot of subtle moments that underlines the love and trust within the band and their crew at this moment in time.
Johnny Yen makes a welcome return to the setlist, a song that always seems to feature in Manchester. Johnny is forty this year and yet seems to still have the vigour, energy and joyfulness of youth as the band lead him down a wandering path of discovery, improvising in sections. Tim tells us at the end that it should have been on the greatest hits (it was on the Nothing But Love compilation).
Way Over Your Head is on that greatest hits and rightly so - a song every bit as anthemic and uplifting as the big songs from the 1990s that sit alongside it at the end of sets these days but without the nostalgia bias that new material suffers from unfairly. The crowd sing along as the lyrics to the refrain at the end are posted up on the screen.
Come Home was written and recorded just over a mile from here at Beehive Mills and Out Of The Blue in Ancoats when it was rundown and rough unlike the regenerated part of the city that the Coop sits on the edge of. Its signature calling card hookline is an immediate invitation for the twenty four thousand to lose themselves in the music, something the band do too as Tim and Debbie dance together on the elevated walkway in front of the barrier. One of the things that make James so special live is the way they revisit some of their classic best-loved songs and reinvent them to give them new life and spark without losing any of the spirit or magic of the original. Tomorrow is the beneficiary of that on this tour, starting slowly with Jim and Saul dictating the pace of the song throughout, building at the start and then again at the dropdown as the standing area becomes a sea of hands and there's hardly anyone in the venue not on their feet.
It's nearing the end of the set now so the usual expectation would be a run of hits to the end of the night, but this is James. They go all the way back to 1982 and a song that appeared on a Factory video live from the Hacienda that has never been released in studio form, but which has dipped in and out of James' setlists over the intervening forty-four years. It is of course nowadays very very different. They haven't played it before on the tour and decide to throw it in as the penultimate song of the main part of the set. Stutter is a glorious wall of noise, Saul and Chloe joining in on drums, Mark moving to Debbie's full kit and Tim ending the song on Mark's keyboards as the lighting reinforces the sense of the world about to end. It's something only James would dare to try, let alone pull off in front of such a huge audience on the biggest night of the tour.
Sometimes is a glorious conclusion to the main set, a communion, an exorcism of demons and a euphoric ending when the audience take the song and make it their own.
As the encore starts Tim makes the point to thank Doves who have been an incredible support act on this tour, and reserves special thanks for their on-stage crew, particularly Aled and Lolo, without whom none of this would happen. He then tells us that they're going to do something very James and that the audience need to stay put. Nantucket, if you've read other reviews of this tour, is a brand new song, so fresh that Tim is still tweaking the lyrics before they go into the recording studio. It's an eight-minute journey through multiple sections, some upbeat danceable, some taking it down to one instrument in focus, with lyrics in sections that feel like you've known them all your life after one listen.
There's another interruption for someone needing help in the audience and the band are visibly frustrated at how long it takes for security to respond. It's eventually resolved and James sign off the tour with Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) and Laid. The former is a celebration of saying "fuck it" and letting yourself be taken along on the ride, something that is very close to James' ethos. Tim crowdsurfs again, a ridiculously brave or stupid move for a sixty-six year old dependent on whether you're a fan or their insurance company, before they leave us with a version of Laid that the crowd sing the first verse to a slowed down version, then a speeded up one and then Tim sings it. Everyone's on their feet from the barrier to the very back rows of the arena, the floor is a sea of bouncing bodies. They take their bows to the tour's byline "LOVE IS THE ANSWER" in big capital letters on the screens.
Tonight was an euphoric celebration of one of Manchester's biggest yet less-celebrated bands. Refusing to be pigeon-holed to a scene or a movement has allowed them to shape-shift over time, from the four boys who practised in a Withington scout hut, through the austerity of the Sire years, the "overnight success" of Sit Down, the resurrection of The Best Of, band fallouts, six years apart and then a post-reformation career that is now as long as the pre-reformation one. They're more energised and together than they've ever been before, inspired by their evolution and playing their biggest shows ever without resorting to the easy nostalgic route that would probably kill them in the end.
James played Five-O, Waltzing Along, I Know What I’m Here For, Sit Down, Heads, Zero, Say Something, Born Of Frustration, Shadow Of A Giant, Johnny Yen, Way Over Your Head, Come Home, Tomorrow, Stutter, Sometimes, Nantucket, Getting Away With It (All Messed Up),Laid
James' official website can be found here and 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
Photos - Liam Walker - Shooting Our Mouths Off blog
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