HEY MA - MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS REVIEW

AND here it is... the album which few of us expected ever to hear.

After many comings and goings, James said their farewells to the world at the M.E.N. Arena in December 2001, and even sealed the finality of the event in a live CD and DVD.

Six years later, after James dipped their toe back in the water with live dates last year, we have the first album of new James material since 2001.

And it bears at least some of the hallmarks of the band's early-1990s commercial high watermark, not least the return of Andy Diagram's exultant trumpet playing.

It was during that period that James minted the sky-scraping dynamics which served them well in the big gigs, and the album kicks off with a great example of the type, Bubbles, which simmers along portentously for fully 2mins 40secs before bursting forth with Booth declaring "I'm alive" and Diagram trilling away at his horn.

It stirs the blood well enough, but perhaps more satisfying are the mellow musings of Semaphore or the more straightforward hooky pop of Waterfall, in which Booth sounds unnervingly like Lou Reed in one of his lighter moments.

The rock craftsmanship endures in songs like Boom Boom and the melodramatic Upside, neither of which sound like a band which is weary of a career stretching back to the early 1980s.

One suspects from the album title and the controversial cover art of a baby reaching for a gun, that the anti-war song Hey Ma is what James consider the most important work here.

Perhaps the diehard fans will agree, but the less committed may find it too worthy and the sing-song chorus - 'Hey Ma the boys in body bags coming home in pieces' - a bit of a blunt instrument in itself.

That said, those diehards will welcome this album as manna from heaven. It's a heartening return to the fray.