Post by sweezely on Dec 12, 2010 20:27:00 GMT -5
The new Birmingham O2 Academy is a wretched place. It was like being assaulted through a megaphone while trapped inside a commode. This was how James trumped Spinal Tap for the title of "World's Loudest Band".
The Pigeon Detectives opened by treating the audience in the same way actual pigeons treat statues. The frontman (real name Twatty McDickhead) strutted around on stage in the mistaken belief he had actual talent. The rest of the band seemed content that they could illicit sounds from their instruments and when the frontman wasn't squawking into the mic he was twirling it around like a young child realising he is capable of throwing things and annoying everyone. Each moment was more non-descript than the last, save only for the highlight of their set when the “singer” fell on his stupid face trying to catch a water bottle for the forty-seventh time. He unfortunately emerged unscathed.
Someone in the crowd had a bowel disorder that could be diagnosed by stench alone.
James emerged sheepishly and slightly confused. Larry mostly stayed in his chair and doped up to the eyeballs due to a back injury. I'm not entirely sure he knew where he was. I think he managed to play the same songs as the band only accidentally. Tim was wearing what looked like a school blazer worn over some pyjamas. Saul was doing some bizarre Roberto Mancini impression. Andy was wearing clothes appropriate to his sex, presumably because he didn't realise he was at a gig either. Jim looked to have lost a lot of weight, so much so that his head has shrunk. Dave and Mark looked like they were only there to fulfil a hit on someone.
Dust Motes opened. Sometimes James have trouble translating new material live if it hasn't been road tested thoroughly, but Dust Motes sounds as good, if not better, live. Restrained to start with before bursting to life, it sounds appropriately ballsy in the second half without losing any beauty. An assured start. PS followed and immediately set the bar higher than Larry on Demerol. Violent, moody, almost abusive, no better statement of intent could they have made. To follow something so angry with the utter exuberance of Born Of Frustration was an absolute stroke of genius.
Few songs could match that opening and It's Hot is not one of them. It's just as monotonous and rubbish live, although thankfully it was short.
Tim prefaced Tell Her I Said So with a story of how his mother was in a home. It's rather odd that he would write something so bitter and cynical about relatives banishing the elderly to retirement homes when that's exactly where his mother is. Still, I guess most of the band will be there in a few years. The song itself was much as you would expect of a synth heavy James number - slightly rough around the edges and not quite right, but no less interesting. This would be the last of the new songs for a while. Getting Away With It was the crowd pleaser to get everyone ready for what followed: four forgotten classics.
What perhaps became most stale about James ten years ago were their predictable greatest hits sections. It seems James have now realised that they have so many greatest hits they don't always need to play the same ones. Runaground was forgotten just like many compilation-only tracks, but was all the more welcome. Kulas absent, the main riff was too, which made it unrecognisable at first. In fact it was mostly subdued and slightly stripped back, but it sounded much more like modern James and much fresher than it's oft-played Best Of cousin. Just Like Fred Astaire was similarly played, although renditioned slightly more towards the "controlled chaos" side of things. The same treatment was applied to the most welcome resurrection of the decade - Lost A Friend. If ever a song deserved more exposure, it is this one.
By this time the acoustics had pretty much given everyone permanent hearing damage and the unnecessarily loud bass had pushed everyone twenty feet away from the stage. Jam J thundered in as is if none of the band were ready for it. The sound coming from the stage was so alien and balls-to-the-wall intense that it sounded like the defining offensive in a futuristic noise war. The planet has never heard anything like it. Highlight of the evening.
Rabbit Hole, the last of the new songs, sounds more than ever like it was assembled from discarded bits of other songs. Tim tried to explain it was about quantum physics, although I'm not sure quantum physics means what he thinks it means.
Sit Down, thankfully played and thankfully not the closer, was accompanied by the band actually sitting down on the edge of the stage. Dave brought a little military drum, Mark his melodica and they played an acoustic version that didn't sound at all like an acoustic version. The effect was supposed to be like a cosy campfire, but the aged leers from behind sunken eyes, the bizarre wardrobe and look of narcolepsy lent it the feel of a support group for sex offenders. Creepy.
Three older songs before the finale. Don't Wait That Long sounds more anachronistic than ever before, but the shocking pink spotlights at least made it fabulously anachronistic. God Only Knows was another surprise, the divine intervention of the noise war when sheer sonic force destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, with Tim smiting the audience under strobe lights. Fortunately Johnny Yen started with "a real fuck up", proving that they are human after all.
Ring The Bells is... Ring The Bells. It's been trotted out so many times that it's hard to say anything else. Sound too, and they even went back to the predictable 2001 version. It did seem to go on for about twenty minutes though. If anything, the older, more staple songs show a band going through the motions. Not quite like a decade ago, but it was clear which songs sounded fresher.
Not content to be predictable though, they closed with Stutter. If Jam J was the memorable battle, Stutter was the terrifying deterrent. Mutually assured destruction, in the form of music. With no fewer than three of them drumming (Mark can play the drums? Who knew) the visual spectacle alone was enough to horrify, and when added to the music it was like being James' abused spouse - repeatedly punched in the face with noise and one step shy of being killed. No other band treats its audience like that, and I mean that in both senses of the word “treat”.
It's a shame the encore was so tired. Out To Get You was more or less the same, barring the hyperactive conclusion. It's a lovely song and usually a highlight but after the utter balls and brilliance of what came before, it felt very low-key. Sometimes, and then Laid closed. By then though no one could hear anything so it was simply a matter of watching the chaos unfold. Overly rehearsed yet lively chaos. Any other night these would have been classic renditions. Tonight they were the disappointing end.
For one glorious night it was like the last dreadful decade of music never happened.
The Pigeon Detectives opened by treating the audience in the same way actual pigeons treat statues. The frontman (real name Twatty McDickhead) strutted around on stage in the mistaken belief he had actual talent. The rest of the band seemed content that they could illicit sounds from their instruments and when the frontman wasn't squawking into the mic he was twirling it around like a young child realising he is capable of throwing things and annoying everyone. Each moment was more non-descript than the last, save only for the highlight of their set when the “singer” fell on his stupid face trying to catch a water bottle for the forty-seventh time. He unfortunately emerged unscathed.
Someone in the crowd had a bowel disorder that could be diagnosed by stench alone.
James emerged sheepishly and slightly confused. Larry mostly stayed in his chair and doped up to the eyeballs due to a back injury. I'm not entirely sure he knew where he was. I think he managed to play the same songs as the band only accidentally. Tim was wearing what looked like a school blazer worn over some pyjamas. Saul was doing some bizarre Roberto Mancini impression. Andy was wearing clothes appropriate to his sex, presumably because he didn't realise he was at a gig either. Jim looked to have lost a lot of weight, so much so that his head has shrunk. Dave and Mark looked like they were only there to fulfil a hit on someone.
Dust Motes opened. Sometimes James have trouble translating new material live if it hasn't been road tested thoroughly, but Dust Motes sounds as good, if not better, live. Restrained to start with before bursting to life, it sounds appropriately ballsy in the second half without losing any beauty. An assured start. PS followed and immediately set the bar higher than Larry on Demerol. Violent, moody, almost abusive, no better statement of intent could they have made. To follow something so angry with the utter exuberance of Born Of Frustration was an absolute stroke of genius.
Few songs could match that opening and It's Hot is not one of them. It's just as monotonous and rubbish live, although thankfully it was short.
Tim prefaced Tell Her I Said So with a story of how his mother was in a home. It's rather odd that he would write something so bitter and cynical about relatives banishing the elderly to retirement homes when that's exactly where his mother is. Still, I guess most of the band will be there in a few years. The song itself was much as you would expect of a synth heavy James number - slightly rough around the edges and not quite right, but no less interesting. This would be the last of the new songs for a while. Getting Away With It was the crowd pleaser to get everyone ready for what followed: four forgotten classics.
What perhaps became most stale about James ten years ago were their predictable greatest hits sections. It seems James have now realised that they have so many greatest hits they don't always need to play the same ones. Runaground was forgotten just like many compilation-only tracks, but was all the more welcome. Kulas absent, the main riff was too, which made it unrecognisable at first. In fact it was mostly subdued and slightly stripped back, but it sounded much more like modern James and much fresher than it's oft-played Best Of cousin. Just Like Fred Astaire was similarly played, although renditioned slightly more towards the "controlled chaos" side of things. The same treatment was applied to the most welcome resurrection of the decade - Lost A Friend. If ever a song deserved more exposure, it is this one.
By this time the acoustics had pretty much given everyone permanent hearing damage and the unnecessarily loud bass had pushed everyone twenty feet away from the stage. Jam J thundered in as is if none of the band were ready for it. The sound coming from the stage was so alien and balls-to-the-wall intense that it sounded like the defining offensive in a futuristic noise war. The planet has never heard anything like it. Highlight of the evening.
Rabbit Hole, the last of the new songs, sounds more than ever like it was assembled from discarded bits of other songs. Tim tried to explain it was about quantum physics, although I'm not sure quantum physics means what he thinks it means.
Sit Down, thankfully played and thankfully not the closer, was accompanied by the band actually sitting down on the edge of the stage. Dave brought a little military drum, Mark his melodica and they played an acoustic version that didn't sound at all like an acoustic version. The effect was supposed to be like a cosy campfire, but the aged leers from behind sunken eyes, the bizarre wardrobe and look of narcolepsy lent it the feel of a support group for sex offenders. Creepy.
Three older songs before the finale. Don't Wait That Long sounds more anachronistic than ever before, but the shocking pink spotlights at least made it fabulously anachronistic. God Only Knows was another surprise, the divine intervention of the noise war when sheer sonic force destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, with Tim smiting the audience under strobe lights. Fortunately Johnny Yen started with "a real fuck up", proving that they are human after all.
Ring The Bells is... Ring The Bells. It's been trotted out so many times that it's hard to say anything else. Sound too, and they even went back to the predictable 2001 version. It did seem to go on for about twenty minutes though. If anything, the older, more staple songs show a band going through the motions. Not quite like a decade ago, but it was clear which songs sounded fresher.
Not content to be predictable though, they closed with Stutter. If Jam J was the memorable battle, Stutter was the terrifying deterrent. Mutually assured destruction, in the form of music. With no fewer than three of them drumming (Mark can play the drums? Who knew) the visual spectacle alone was enough to horrify, and when added to the music it was like being James' abused spouse - repeatedly punched in the face with noise and one step shy of being killed. No other band treats its audience like that, and I mean that in both senses of the word “treat”.
It's a shame the encore was so tired. Out To Get You was more or less the same, barring the hyperactive conclusion. It's a lovely song and usually a highlight but after the utter balls and brilliance of what came before, it felt very low-key. Sometimes, and then Laid closed. By then though no one could hear anything so it was simply a matter of watching the chaos unfold. Overly rehearsed yet lively chaos. Any other night these would have been classic renditions. Tonight they were the disappointing end.
For one glorious night it was like the last dreadful decade of music never happened.
