The Beat Surrender

As I’ve said in my recent album review, I’ve always been a big James fan, so to write this review is a little crushing for me and not something I do lightly.

It’s the first time I’ve ever left a venue having watched the band and felt disappointed and I reckon I’m getting towards double figures for the number of times I’ve seen them.

It’s a real shame because pretty much everything is set up for them and the gig to be fantastic tonight, sometimes though it’s just down to the band and the decisions they make, tonight James don’t make the right decisions set list wise and it costs them dearly.

I’ll come onto that later on though, things actually start pretty well this evening, which is what makes it that bit more disappointing. My Federation are supporting tonight and they have an unenviable task ahead of them.

They are a young band and this in the main is an audience chock full of people in their 30’s and 40’s, who in the nicest possible way aren’t all probably as up on up and coming bands as they were 15 – 20 years ago. They also start quite early, coming on stage at 7.50 so a large portion of the crowd are either still in the bar (you can’t take beer from the bars into the actual room for some reason) or haven’t actually got to the venue.

This is a shame because My Federation deserve a bigger crowd tonight, they play with confidence, have a tight sound and a front man who does everything he can to ingratiate himself and the band with the crowd. Tracks like Honey Bee, What Gods Are These and the latest single Don’t Wanna Die are delivered with real rock ‘n’ roll quality about them.

The crowd seem to have warmed to them by the end of the set and when lead singer Lee ‘Muddy’ Baker asks who would be willing to come and see them again in another venue if they played again, the response is pretty positive. I’d back that up myself as I’m sure in a smaller venue, it would amplify all their positives even further.

So next we move onto James after a quick pint in the bar downstairs of course. They come on stage in a confident manner and belt straight into Born Of Frustration, a great single at the time from an underrated album I always thought and it sounds just as good tonight.

As you would expect from a band with a new album out now, they are keen to plug it, so next we get Oh My Heart, which is quickly followed by another new song, Boom Boom. This track features some nice mournful guitar and things are off to a very promising start.

Things get even better when they then follow up with Ring The Bells, it’s always been one of my favourite James songs, even though it was one of the least successful singles they released while in their prime. It gets the crowd on their feet and the band are clearly enjoying themselves, Tim Booth has some banter with the crowd about the fact he’s from Bradford and he gets heckled about his moustache which in all honesty is a good call.

It’s at this point though when they have the crowd on a high that they lose the plot completely in terms of their set-list and seem to forget that people have paid upwards of £30 for a ticket to see a band that until last year hadn’t been together for the five years previous to this. That might seem a bit harsh but this isn’t a Led Zeppelin style one off gig after all these years, it’s a tour from an ageing band that has a great back catalogue.

This though doesn’t phase the band as they belt out eight tracks in a row, of which only one isn’t taken from the new album and even that track (I forget the title) is taken from one of their later sub standard albums. People shuffle in seats, go to the bar and the toilet and generally humour the band by clapping at the end of each admittedly well played, well sung track, it’s just the tracks are a little dull live.

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