HEY MA - SUNDAY TIMES REVIEW

You might think that seven years away from the studio would have replenished James’s never-exactly-bursting inspiration banks, resulting in an album absolutely zinging with mighty choruses and renewed zeal. You might then read the accompanying blurb, with its talk of the producer letting the band “jam at their leisure, something that always brings out the best in them”, and its boast that no fewer than 120 songs were whittled down to the 11 sanctimonious, declamatory, defiantly average and group-huggingly smug tracks featured here, and think, lawks, are they still, this late in the game, strangers to the joys of the traditional song structure; and, if this lot represent the best, what on God’s earth were the other 109 like?