History has an interesting place for a band like James. In their native UK they’re as commonplace as their name, selling millions of albums and scoring several high-charting hits.
Across the rest of the world they’re a little more obscure, accumulating only minor degrees of success here in Australia and in the United States. Regardless, the band has soldiered on at times when others would have most certainly stumbled and fallen off the face of the Earth, even if there was a time James weren’t even entertaining the idea of playing together again.
“I think it was necessary that we took our time away from another,” says Saul Davies, who joined the group back in 1989 and contributes guitar, violin and backing vocals. “By the time James ended in 2001, we were always at one another’s throats. It was very timely when it all came to a close. We had no inclination to get back together until maybe six years later – and, initially, that was purely just to make music together. That’s the thing, I think, that properly kept us going once we got back together. We weren’t interested in nostalgia. We weren’t even interested in playing live or releasing anything at that point. It was more about making something new, and rekindling the relationships between each of us in the band. Time had done its work, healing the tension, and we found ourselves in a good situation. It was a bit like starting again, in a lot of ways.”
We’re now eight years into James 2.0, which retained all of the members from its final lineup save for guitarist Michael Kulas. They’ve released four albums since their return – 2008’s Hey Ma, 2010’s simultaneously released The Night Before and The Morning After, and last year’s Le Petite Mort. They’ve followed that up less than a year later with their 14th LP overall, displaying the kind of productivity that most veteran acts could barely comprehend in their prime, let alone on their second go-around.
“It’s funny – we’re in the 35th year of James being a band, and this is our 14th album,” says Davies. “With that being said, it all genuinely feels really fresh again. It’s certainly a time when a lot of bands in our position would just be going through the motions, but that’s not what this feels like at all. If you listen to any of the records that we’ve put out since we got back together, I think you’ll agree that we’re not a band that’s exactly devoid of ideas. We’re very much driven creatively to continue working together, which is certainly buck[ing] the trend. Everything we’re doing now is so gratifying – we get to play some amazing shows, we get to play music that we’re really proud of and we get to connect with a fanbase that has seen us through everything. That’s more than enough for us.”
James have a 14-date tour scheduled around the UK in May before they make a handful of appearances at various stops on the summer festival circuit. No plans are currently laid out for Australia – indeed, even in their heyday, James never once made it out here. “We have no idea what it’s like, to be honest,” says Davies. “If we did book shows out there, we simply have no idea of who would come or if anyone would want to see us.” Still, those who will get to see the band live in support of Girl At The End of the World will be seeing exactly that – the band pushing its latest material to the front and giving it the lion’s share of the setlist. For an outfit that is primarily interested in looking forward, Davies says it’s only fair that James treat their new songs with respect.
“We’re not a ‘greatest hits’ band,” says Davies, almost with an air of defiance in his tone. “We’re never going to be, and we never were. I doubt we’ll be playing ‘Sit Down’ on this tour. We probably won’t play ‘Laid’, either. We’ve reached a brilliant point in our career where the people that are coming to see us genuinely want to hear the new album. At our headlining shows, we tend to play for about two hours. That’s long enough to touch on everything, with a bit of extra emphasis on the new album – we’ll probably play around eight of the new songs.”
Davies goes on to explain the finer points of the setlist, deviating away from Girl At The End Of The World and balancing out with both the obscure and the not-so-obscure. “There will be a few tracks that we’ll play that people seem to still really love – there’s a song called ‘She’s A Star’, which we’re going to do in a completely new way, and we’ll be doing our song ‘Sometimes’ as well. Our shows are very much designed for people who have been long-time fans – occasionally, we’ll throw in a super-weird B-side or something like that, and see those few faces in the crowd light up because they never thought they’d hear us play it. We’re looking at songs to make moments like that, and not just the obvious big sing-along moments.”
