James

A hairy dog was the prize at the coconut stall

‘Hey Ma’ (Fontana)

James are back with their 10th studio album, their first for seven years, from the moment you hear Tim Booth deliver his trademark vocal against the bands soaring guitar-led crescendo it’s hard not to transport yourself back to a lazy summer night sometime in the early nineties – your first smoke, first time beyond first base – Gold Mother on the stereo.

Bands like The Stone Roses and James looked set to take over the world and our wardrobes and banish the new romantics forever.

Of course it all went awry and like the Roses, James bore the brunt too, forever living in the shadow of Sit Down, they carved out a career of indie journeymen capable of producing moments of dizzying brilliance with singles such as Laid, Born of Frustration and Tomorrow – their faithful hardcore forever in tow, surviving the laddish Britpop years and a bruising Lollapalooza tour before they split in 2001.

Booth and co got back together in 2006 and after a successful 2007 reformation tour put together Hey Ma in France, on first listen it’s like they have never been gone, jam-packed with everything James does best, uplifting soulful guitar pop – the cheese and wine must have been fantastic.

There are some killer tracks here, at least three or four. Opening track Bubbles, the Lou Reed-esque Waterfall and title track Hey Ma are sure fire foot-tappers.

There’s a couple of misses here too, but they would hardly be called fillers, it’s hard to like Booth’s weird vocal inflection in Oh My Heart and the faux-patois of Whiteboy although catchy at first, soon grates.

Small gripes aside, hopefully this album will reach a new generation of people who have plenty of time to spend lazing around on summer nights, James are Indie royalty and we wouldn’t be surprised if our vintage Come Home t-shirts would be worth a few bob on eBay these days.

We say: ‘Squire, Brown, Wren, Mounfield – take note’

They say: ‘once the guitars get rolling and Booth scrapes the sky with his tenor, you find yourself weirdly hooked.’ The Guardian

Best track: Bubbles, like a time machine back to 1991.

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