Tim Booth of JAMES is leaving the band!

It's somewhat surprising that this appears to be the only thread dedicated to these guys. My entry point (surprise surprise) for these records was Eno -- to that end, in retrospect, I was maybe a bit underwhelmed by Laid despite (or perhaps because of) all the hype, but I've been really enjoying the two later-era Eno-produced records of late, Millionaires and Pleased to Meet You -- both of which have great tunes, fabulous Eno production touches and really put Tim Booth in the best light. I also think Wah Wah is a bit under-appreciated.

Also, other than where they're from, I've never heard The Smiths connection in the least.

What say ILM?

http://www.ironcowprod.com/wp-content/gallery/cinema_batmanbegins_zsasz/batman_begins_zsasz_3.jpg

Love "Laid," "Wah Wah," "Whiplash" and "Millionaires" whole-heartedly. Never really heard the early stuff save the hits, "Please To Meet You" is OK. "Hey Ma" not bad. Can't get into the most recent stuff. Saw them live a year or two ago and they were awesome.

This song is awfully pretty, with nice Eno backing vox:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z5afSN5QzI

80s singles, I'll DJ "Hymn" and "Hup-Springs" > choice tracks from "Pleased to meet you" (i.e. "Getting away with it") > lots of "Laid" and "Wah Wah" > various other singles. I don't like many of their albums as a whole and would even say many of them are "bad" ("Gold Mother" for example), but tracks like "Seven", "Sometimes", "Johnny Yen", "She's a star", are all so nice and individually good. Tim is a spotty lyricist but when he's on I think he's as good as many of his heroes. "Pleased to meet you" is their best album imo.

Andy Diagram went on to play w David Thomas which is an interesting lateral move

"Please To Meet You" is OK.

AllMusic says it's their best -- and lots of listening suggests they may be right. For instance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks6kdHmUtA8

Millionaires is great, too, tho. Where Laid today sounds maybe a bit staid from a both song and production standpoint, Millionaires and PTMY each feel far more ambitious -- in part bc Eno imposes his 70MM approach to U2 (for example, the riff of "Just Like Fred Astaire," the chorus of "We're Gonna Miss You") and the playful DX7/vocoder electronics from his later period ("I Know What I'm Here For," "Vervaceous") on top of what I think are the best pure "tunes" of James' career (I should note that from everything I've read, Eno didn't show up to the Millionaires and PTMY sessions until they were well underway -- so I don't want to give too much credit for the sound of these records to him).

Regardless, I think both of these records (and the band by and large) are really underrated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68S9w1gpwCM

<3 millionaires

I met TB on a resort island in NY when I was about 17 and he was a lot older. He then spent the week hanging out with one of my good friends. It was very strange and sort of creepy in retrospect.

"Smiths connection"

I saw james live when they supported, um...

Been listening to "Pleased to Meet You" a bunch. Still think it's sort of oddly sequenced and just somehow ... off, but there are plenty of lovely moments to go around.

I'm really surprised how either underrated or overlooked Eno's longtime collaboration with the band was. Four albums, lots of good b-sides, a real subtle but still prominent presence on all the records. They even got him to sing live at one of their (then) farewell shows, which is one of half dozen times he's sung live in the past 25 years or something.

I just remember that moment in Swollen Appendices where he gets mad at their violinist

i liked born of frustration a lot at the time. the lyrics dont really hold up for me now, but the woo-woo's are something else.

Another bunch of stuff from around that time I wouldn't go back to, but I'd save "Come Home" from the charity dumper...

Pleased to Meet You is easily my favourite James album. Space is such a great opener love the way he sings "It's a shock to my system" Getting Away With It could well be my favourite single of theirs, shame it came out when no-one really cared. Hey Ma had some moments but was quite patchy. White Boy was a great single.

Born of Frustration was a great single, always thought Coldplay ripped off the tune for Clocks.

Laid is one of those records that's probably quite high in my personal canon if I ever remember it exists, if that makes sense. This thread is doing a good job persuading me to give PTMY a try.

whoa:

In a review of the album in 1999, Q Magazine stated:[2]

'While musically different, a similar burning sense of an idea whose time has come runs through Parklife, Urban Hymns, Everything Must Go, OK Computer and (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. These are the albums that, if there’s any justice, Millionaires will be cited alongside when the great British rock records of this decade are counted.'

There's a big drop-off in that list, the next one was "All Change"

...

The genealogy of "The Joshua Tree" -> five Eno+James records -> "Viva La Vida" is so apparent to my ears and Tim Booth is my favourite singer/lyricist of the bunch.

I "Millionaires" is my favorite James after "Laid."

Amazing that "Millionaires" and "Pleased To Me You" did not even get US release, afaik.

iirc I had to have someone buy Millionaires for me while they were on a trip to England.

I downloaded it in MP2 format

Well that's one way to use "Sit Down" I guess

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxWfvtnHtS0

Millionaires is their best record, I think. Whiplash is underrated. I find Laid a bit meandering, aside from the singles.

I really love this band

I love that they've never made a truly great album, it always makes me feel like they've still got that classic in them

I love that Tim's lyrics continue to get more reckless and enthralling

I love that they have these ridiculous conceits about making "music that nobody's ever heard before" but it's really just Coldplay with lower bar

I love that Saul is the lousiest violinist in the game and hearing him struggle to come up with any good ideas gives me strange pleasure that I cannot unpack

I love that Eno kind of is effortlessly insulting to them in his Year Of Swollen Appendices

I love Wah-Wah and all the out-of-tune singing and half-baked idiocy

I love their 80s output full-stop and will never not play "Hymn From A Village" when it's my turn to DJ

This band is the musical equivalent of that particular kind of banal-but-ineffible English mediocrity, like carrot cake, Morris dancing, maypoles, Ted Hughes, "Allo! Allo!", prawn sandwiches, English coastal vacation towns, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Wensleydale cheese, and so on

I am forever a stan

me too

Also to be really real, I can't think of any other lyricist who claims Patti Smith as an influence but actually delivers, and at times, supersedes her. "Getting Away With It" and other latter-day songs really go off

i'm with you, fgti.. in high school a friend of mine made me a tape and on side 1 she put Seven by James (side 2 was Cracker by Cracker.) i wore that tape out. it was actually a deeply influential cassette in my life.

Just realized that, other than Walk on the Wild Side which I had heard once or twice on classic rock radio, James was my first introduction to the Velvet Underground via a cover of Sunday Morning on their Born of Frustration maxi-single.

so when did he come back then?

2007. Only six years after he left.

In light of the Passengers thread revive, I feel like we need to resurrect this thread as well. Two pillars of Eno’s 90s Imperial Productions Phase.

Did anyone actually spring for the Super Deluxe Laid/Wah Wah? I do appreciate that it’s all available on Spotify but I imagine listening to these ramshackle (and not altogether unpretentious) tapes whilst reading a glossy book about the sessions/ambitions/etc. would be fun.

Relatedly, I note that Eno’s remix of “We’re Going to Miss You” off of Millionaires is now available on their B-Sides comp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRqD5xQ0CPY

I don't own the Laid/Wah Wah set though I'd really like to. I can never quite work out when, if at all, these big box sets become affordable. Is there a split second between 'costs a lot' and 'goes out of print and gets pricier'?

I stopped trying to play that game because for every one of those there’s a complementary “bought it for $90 new and is available for $35 secondhand two years later” release to get burned on