i hesitated to write this review for 2 reasons: 1. james has been my favourite band for 14 years, i am in no way impartial, and there is a limit to how many times you can say how awesome an experience is without sounding like the proverbial broken record and 2. the show was pretty damn awesome and special and effervescent and there really are no words. but i decided to suck it up and write something, mainly because the average grunt out there probably doesn’t even know that james is back together (hooray!) and has a stellar new album out (hey ma, 04.07.08) and might even come to the states in august. be still my heart.

anyway, in light of the above disclaimers, i’ll make it short and sweet. i went to london to see james with my best friend zak and it was rad. tim booth is bald now, but he still dances in that crazy shamanistic way, larry gott is still a guitar genius, andy diagram was back with his trumpet wearing a daisy dress on stage. they played almost the whole new album, and tons of older stuff too. although they didn’t play either of their best-known songs ’sit down’ or ‘laid,’ they started with ‘born of frustration,’ ended with ’sometimes (lester pigott)’ and played pretty much everything in between that i could have wished. tim jumped out into the crowd during ‘come home’ and the whole band just generally seemed to be having a great time playing to an audience that loved them.

speaking of, james fans are legendary and there is a very special dynamic that happens between the band and the crowd, trust me. the venue was small enough to keep it intimate, the crowd knew every word to every song and jumped around like the happy idiots we were. i moshed! it was very early 90’s, oh my god. there were people there who came from mexico and portugal and sweden to see james and warm fuzzy feelings of camaraderie abounded for the most part, with the exception of a few ruffians who kept trying to push their way to the front. i pushed back though, so no worries. i screamed myself hoarse, got my piggy toes smooshed by other jumping fans and had a huge grin plastered over my face the entire time…not nearly high enough praise for a night that i seriously will remember the rest of my life. the show ended with the audience stamping their feet and singing the chorus of ’sometimes’ over and over and over as the band stood on stage smiling and enjoying the impromptu appreciation.

so there’s your review. enjoy it. and more importantly, go see james if you ever get a chance. i promise it will be a pretty incredible experience, no matter what kind of music you are into.

ps. my federation opened. not bad, but i was too excited to focus on them. the singer has a lot of hair, though.

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