The Beat Surrender

Back in the very early 90’s when I was first getting heavily into music (i’d always been into music but it was around this time that I started to become slightly obsessed and my now ridiculous record collection really started to take shape) my favourite band wasn’t Blur, it was James, the whole Blur thing happened around the time of Modern Life Is Rubbish when I was blown away by that record.

I had James t-shirts I had the early albums that didn’t really hint at the massive crossover potential that the band had, the early recordings were awkward, angular, folky, but ultimately brilliant. Then of course Sit Down and Goldmother happened for the band and before you knew it they were huge, selling out arenas and a gig at Alton Towers (that i’ve still got on cassette to this day taped off the radio).

They then provided my first live music experience (outside of Black Lace at the school disco of course) when I got free tickets to see them play an acoustic gig at the old Town And Country in Leeds through an athletics contact of mine (Larry Gott’s brother in law as it happens). Moving on a year or two and that contact was again to prove unbelievably useful when Larry Gotts wife (I think she was called Jane) sent me a load of notes and pictures to help with my art project on record sleeve design, she’d done all the artwork around the Laid album and singles and you can’t imagine how helpful that was to me.

Since then i’ve bought the albums when they came out and been to see them on tour a few times, they may not be my favourite band of all time anymore now that Blur have superceded them but they’ve kind of always been there with me on my musical journey. So it was pleasing to see that they had reformed last year and even more important was the fact that Larry Gott and Jim Glennie were back in the fold.

The natural progression for them of course is to start to record together again and the results of this are Hey Ma, the bands latest album that was released today. It may not have the bite of the James of old, but this old dog of a band have more than enough nouse about them to still make a worthy record.

This is clear in the lyrics that retain that edge that they’ve always had, add to that the fact that Tim Booth still has that unmistakable vocal style and delivery and the results should please old fans of a similar nature to myself. The album opens with Bubbles a song that is clearly about the birth of Tim Booths child (as I presume is the cover art as well), the title track follows and it’s hear that you get the first taste of the lyrical bite as Booth snaps “hey ma, the boys in bodybags, coming home in pieces”, my guess would be that this has to be a political attack on the Iraq war, with Booth though you never know.

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