It’s incredible to think that James first picked up their instruments in anger way back in 1982 and supported fellow Mancunians The Smiths on their Meat Is Murder tour three years later. More than 30 years since their formation, Tim Booth’s mob are back with their 13th album. Never ones to shy away from sexuality (remember ‘Laid’), La Petite Mort literally translates as ‘the little death’ – but it’s actually, as y’all probably know, a French euphemism for orgasm.
Indeed, Booth conjures up the ghost of orgasms past on ‘Curse Curse’, where he’s listening to the lusty sounds from the hotel room next door as he watches Lionel Messi in full flow on the TV, all set to house beats, waves of synths and a seriously infectious melody.
At their best, James have always managed to combine the best bits of dance culture with indie pop, but somehow they never quite managed to turn their talent into the world-conquering commercial success they deserved, despite hitting relative paydirt with ‘Sit Down’ and ‘She’s A Star’. Here, the sparklingly insistent ‘Moving On’, the staccato machine gun guitar of ‘Gone Baby Gone’ and the (literally) coming of age guitar pop of ‘Frozen Britain’ prove that they still have a top tune or two in their locker.
The most impressive thing about La Petite Mort is that it sounds like it could have been written by the latest young twenty-somethings with fire in their bellies: Booth, in particular, sounds as angry as ever. Take stomping opener, ‘Walk Like You’, where the singer enquires “Which parent told you that you’re slow?/ My absent dad, my mum’s control, schooled me to be a worker drone”. Like most of La Petite Mort, it gets better with each listen.
The second half does dip a little: ‘Interrogation’ and ‘Quicken The Dead’ are a little James-by-numbers. That said, ballad ‘Bitter Virtue’ is touching, while the closing ‘All I’m Saying’ is an arms-in-the-air anthem up there with the best of their back catalogue. There’s life in these old dogs yet.
OUT NOW.