James – First Direct Arena, Leeds: Live Review

By Mike Ainscoe on 10th June 2024 • ( Leave a comment )

James – First Direct Arena, Leeds – Saturday 8th June 2024

Album #18, Yummy, is out and doing good business and having warmed up with a couple of smaller theatre gigs at either end of the country, James are ready to step back into the bigger arenas. Big arenas for a band with big music and with an increasing number that sees them in 2024 in big band format (although minus orchestra as in their recent work). A dozen musicians roam the stage, several with interchangeable instruments while Tim Booth does his humble frontman role that the masses have made into a Messianic figure. Dressed in white (soon discarding the furry jerkin) and spotlit, he exudes a pristine glow that just adds to the legend.

And with Johnny Yen, they pick a low key opening number before the full band swells the ranks for a livlier bounce with Waltzing Along. A choice pick to set the mood with the “May your mind be wide open, May your heart beat strong, May your minds will be broken, By this heartfelt song” lyric, giving the masses the first chance to join in boisterously and have the upper tiers on their feet.

The first trio of new songs from Yummy where Life’s A Fucking miracle (you can buy the T shirt…) sees Tim into the crowd for the first of several surfs. returned safely by the adoring barrier dwellers, he reminds them ” I want to see you,” after being confronted by swathes of phone screens. He’s only going to come out if those go away – maybe a lesson to be learned from the uncompromising (“if you can’t be without your phone for a couple of hours you need to see someone“) attitude of Tool’s Maynard James Keenan.

The celebration takes off with the love song/jubilant pairing of Just Like Fred Astaire And Ring The Bells; the latter seeing premier league new-ish recruit Chloe Alper grooving away at the front, juggling between he vocal and bass commitments. What a signing she is – and yes, we’re well aware of her prowess from watching one time potential saviors of Progressive Rock, Pure Reason Revolution over several years. Bit of a shift to the Indie anthems of the Madchester boys but she’s right at home and the Better With You bounce from the new album joins seamlessly with the rest of the James anthems. Anthems that might start off innocuously but build to an arm waving, joy bringing crescendo.

The live debut of Butterfly is a point in case. Intimate vocal and easy paced acoustic guitar builds into a climax where the clutch of backing vocalists both earn their keep and prove their worth. The huge back drop and side screens filled with, yes, the butterflies that form a key image of the 2024 James. James go all groovy and proggy psychedelic. Very yummy.

More crowd surfing, singing the chorus with a backing group of several thousand while surfing, comes with Getting Away With It All before a tour debut for Out To Get You and Shadow Of A Giant from the new album ; a point in the show where Saul Davies takes off with a frenzied and ferocious violin part that sees the increasedly tumbling drum part doing its very best to keep up. “He said he was going to do it subdued tonight!” jokes Tim.

The tour has seen some juggling in the set that allows for choice cuts from the catalogue to get filtered along with what turns out tonight to be a bold eight new songs. Yet, the hits are reserved for end of set and encore finales. The result is that the atmosphere and the bar gets raised to experience the communal James heights as the likes of Come Home (a constant reminder of the baggy Madchester days), Sometimes, Laid and inevitably, Sit Down, have Leeds to a man, woman and child submit to the James philosophy – one of which they sing in Tomorrow “You gotta keep faith that your luck/path etc will change.” Hallelujah to that!