The Gathering Sound

An Evening With James.. With The Orchestra of the Swan & The Manchester Consort Choir

What do you do if you’re a band that’s been around for 30 years, lived all the highs and all the lows the fickle music business brings, had several hits including one big, fat anthem, and now find you have a large, dedicated following but know that you probably won’t truly excite the record companies again?

Well, obviously you play as often as you and your following can stand it, charge the earth for tickets, and juke-box all your best loved songs.  Simple.

However, James have never taken the simple option.  Not for them a live show where they are lazily going through the motions.  They have followed their own advice from ‘Sound’, their 1991 top ten hit, striving to ‘do something out of character’. Something they’ve never done before. Often playing lesser known songs, frequently altering arrangements to give fresh zip to crowd pleasers, and sometimes playing their best known song ‘Sit Down’ right at the start of the show, or even eschewing it all together, James are a band who want to enjoy the show as much as their audience do.  And they do that by not allowing tiredness and staleness to set in.

So in some ways it should come as no surprise that they have gone on a bank-breaking tour with an orchestra and choir, playing venues not always associated with the rough and tumble of the rock circuit.  Anyone expecting dinner jackets and posh frocks though, would be pleasantly relieved to find that this was an orchestra, and this was a choir, that were going to get down and dirty with the band.  Other artists seeking to breathe new life in to their show may have fallen in to the Spinal Tap folly, the self-aggrandising prog-rock delusion that pop music is somehow high art. That wasn’t going to happen here.

Taking the back catalogue and choosing songs (at least one from each album) that lend themselves to invigorating interpretation through orchestral accompaniment, rather than simply applying a false artistic credibility to the usual set list, has produced an entirely new experience for the die-hard fans, and a show that can be equally enthralling to anyone who doesn’t really know James.  There are songs no one has heard live before, and songs that even the most dedicated fan has forgotten.  Instead of a sugary, operatic run through of the usual suspects, the audience are treated to a fascinating, thrilling and enthralling experience that doesn’t rely on a history of familiarity.

Joe Duddell’s arrangements for the 22 strong orchestra are spiky, choppy, warm and mellifluous; soaring here, punctuating there.  Bass guitar parts are liberated, vitalised, chords boom out from the string section, horns give new meaning to traditional structure, lending a warm canvass to Andy Diagram, letting his trumpet soar, without ever getting in the way.

And that’s the key to all this; this gourmet food knows that, whatever innovative ingredients you put in the recipe, a meat dish is a meat dish.  Fears that James, the band, would be lost among the orchestral score and chamber sized choir are soon forgotten.  This is still guitar based rock and roll.  This is a band doing what they know best in a way that they didn’t know they could do, and loving every moment of it.

Their joy is infectious, and while some of the normal conventions of the ‘rock gig’ are missing, they are not replaced entirely by the conventions of the orchestral concert.  Yes, there is an interval, yes; we know there will be an encore because, while the band has left the stage, the orchestra and choir remain. There is some comical interplay, the sort you might expect at a Prom concert, but not a ‘gig’: singer Tim Booth steals a violinist’s score sheet and the violinist has to follow him around the stage as Booth teasingly holds it in front of him, before finally tearing it up and throwing it at him. Post-interval, Booth joins the waiting orchestra and finds that by picking up the conductor’s baton, the orchestra play a note. He moves it, they play another. A mime ensues, Booth waving the baton, the orchestra playing, the singer increasingly, ludicrously attempting to catch them out until finally leading them into a rousing blast of the William Tell Overture.  ‘I’ve always wanted to do that he says’ his smile wide.

Greg Batsleer’s choir too know how to bring out the essence of each song; sometimes staying in the background and providing – admittedly quite robust - backing vocals, or despatching various members to stage front to broaden and deepen the song.  In ‘Mediaeval’, from their second album ‘Strip-Mine’, all 16 singers come to the front, and with extra drumming from the some of the band, and everyone playing their hearts out the experience is absolutely thunderous. ‘We are sound’ goes the refrain. Yes, you bloody are!

Expectations, naturally, are different; everyone is seated, there’s a choir and an orchestra.  For a band used to everyone jumping up and down from the off, this is a major challenge.  Booth is a past master at this though, and it’s not long before he’s in amongst the audience, getting literally face-to-face with people, making his way along the rows of seating, singing to and with people, picking others out to dance with.  The psychological barrier between stage and audience is ripped away. We are all in this together. Later, as people find they can leave their seats, get up and enjoy, he leads some of the audience through the auditorium, reminiscent of the scene in Oliver Stone’s ‘The Doors’, as Jim Morrison wove his way around, like some demented guru, more and more people following, chanting ‘Break On Through’.

It’s an emotional evening, joyful, exuberant, moving. Before the interval the band and choir leave the stage still singing, there’s a sense that they’re enjoying this so much they can’t stop.  Later, during ‘Sometimes’, the audience threaten to drown out the show, singing the refrain ‘Sometimes, when I look in your eyes I can see your soul’.  Booth masterfully takes control, getting the audience to alternate with the choir, setting up a mini-contest.  The show is interactive, it’s as important for the audience to be part of this show as it is for the players.

When the end finally comes, a poignant ‘Top of the World’, there is jubilation at how wonderful all this sounds, sadness that it’s the end of the show, the end of the tour.  And there is awe and wonder on the faces of those on stage… This is THE ALBERT HALL for goodness sake! There is a cacophony of noise, the audience is on its feet, singing, clapping, dancing, cheering.  Looking around there is an absolute sea of movement from the floor to the top of the tiers.  Booth watches, marvelling at the spectacle, wanting this moment never to stop, drinking it in to remember this feeling forever.  He turns to his cohort and says ‘wow!’

Wow indeed.