LAID REVIEWS

LAID by Andrew Harrison, Select 4/5

"Thanks for the vino, Eno" it says half way down the list of thanks inside James LP proper number six. Is that all it is? Just down a jeroboam of Chateau Le Boffin Ambiente avec La Tete Lumiere and the curse of over-earnest proselytising group-therapy rock is washed away with the dew? It isn't of course, but the difference between the strained pomposity of "Seven" and this spookily intimate affair is one you could park a bus in. Goodbye the foetus' foot on the cover (=adulthood, obeisance to the female principle, concern for the world) and hello James in a fetching selection of car-boot sale frocks.

Let's dispense with the Eno question: he has made a difference. But rather than pulling a trouble-shooter act - coming in with the big stick - Eno is hardly ever a presence at all here. There are no fractal zooms and no oblique strategies. Instead he's provided the example and encouragement for James to delve deeper into the core of their private mystery than they've ever done before, and then stepped back to let them say it their own way. If you've forgotten what a flat-out weird band this is, "Laid" will slap you round and you'll love it.

"Laid" is about paranoid love songs, ecstatic laments and perverse lullabies. In conventional terms, it makes no sense at all, yet by abandoning Seven's hectoring in favour of a ping-pong mental free jazz, Tim Booth has come up with thoughts and scenarios that are far more involving.

In the title track, Booth is sexual prey to a woman who won't leave him alone, to the extent of breaking and entering in order to bed down with him - yet he finds himself enjoying it. That and the cross-dressing: 'Dress me up in women's clothes / messed around with gender roles / Hide my eyes and call me pretty' &ldots;. "Lullaby" is a bleak moment of cradle-side doubt. "Say Something" and "Five-O" are opaque but intriguing meditations on the failure of love and the path of honesty to live up to their publicity: 'The further you go, the less you know &ldots;. Is the power of love worth the pain of loss?' None of it wades in bombast, all of it moves you in increasingly left-field ways.

The real joy of "Laid" is its supernatural musical landscape. James-as-streamlined-art-cacophony, the James you either loved for their cryptic audacity or hated when they knocked their corners off for the arenas, is nowhere to be heard. Instead "Laid" is spare and coordinated. Flashes of violin and multi-tracked voices add an almost holy feel, but it's often little more than the sparky entwining of Larry Gott's guitar and Jim Glennie's bass.

For the first time it sounds as like there's someone in charge - and no, not Eno, but the collective James brain acting as one. "Everybody Knows" and "Out To Get You" brood and swell like big tides, the tap room chant for the thinking alcoholic "Low Low Low" reels under its own momentum and "Sometimes" has a revelatory quality that the former over-larded James could never achieve. After nine years of groping around for a true reflection of what James are about, "Laid" is more than anyone could have expected: clever, generous and endlessly involving. Not sure about those dresses though. What about a lovely gingham? That would be nice.

Select by Craig McLean 7/10

"Look out, she's gonna blow" they might has well have cried as James early art-folk marginality mutated and grossed-out into huge, weighty bumptious pop. Christendom's first stadium indie band came near bursting point with Seven, a progress/regress that reached an apotheosis with their gale-lashed mega-gig at Alton Towers on the Fourth of July, 1992.

Now with Laid, James have stripped down, pulled back and gone deeper. Even with Eno producing, there's little of the thick atmospherics that hung around Zooropa, his most recent and notable commission. Notwithstanding the utter magnificence of Sometimes (that gospel meets Abba chorus and gloriously melodramatic imagery). Laid is a restrained affair. Sure Low Low Low offers a strangely joyous Vocoded vision of end-of-millenium despair. Yes, Booth may be the angst-ridden spirit guide. But he's got sex: "She only comes when she's on top" he proclaims on the title track.

These are just splashes of colour, however: as a whole, Laid is monochrome and minimal, the perfect backdrop for the creeping paranoia of Out To Get You that starts this sixth album, or the piano-and-organ soul searching of Just Human or the broken howling of One Of The Three (a reference, perhaps, to the Holy Trinity? Or divorce figures? Or Nirvana?)

Finally, Skindiving draws things to a fittingly sparse close, with its U2-esque, robo-rhythmic falsetto. Accompanying this restraint comes a nagging innocuousness, a charge that even detractors could never level at James before. However, even the muted wallow in grey emotion that characterises Laid sounds fresh and true next to Seven's most grandiose statements. Here Tim Booth accepts and accommodates his demons rather than tackling them head on. Seven sold a million copies. This one might sell half that, but it'll endure twice as long.

LAID by Johnny Dee, NME  6/10

It's hard to remember exactly when James blew it, stopped being a band to treasure and champion. They were the number one English sufferers of Go Betweens syndrome - always the bridesmaid, never the bride. After four label changes they deserved success out of sheer unerring persistence alone. When they finally got it, it was like a triumph for pop, a battle won. If these straggly, unfashionable purveyors of jittery folk-rock could have hits, then so could all our favourite bands. Hoozah.

Never part of the Madchester scene, unwittingly getting tangled up in someone else's flares, they profited from the alliance all the same. But now that everyone else has scarpered, James are left alone in the playground, de-bagged and un-loved. And somewhere along the way they've gone from being the greatest live band in britain to the sanctimonious stadium-fodder, that most hated of beasts - the mainstream Indie band.

So what price James now? The ubiquitous t-shirts are disappearing, the crowd-pleasing "Sit Down" and "Come Home" have become the student equivalent of "The Birdy Song" and the last two albums have been patchy disappointments to say the least.  Their acoustic shows and Neil Young supports were heralded in some quarters as a renaissance, but "Laid" needed to be a comeback, a return to form - not that they really had any in the first place. Sadly it isn't. Instead, James are veering in true push-me-pull-you stylee towards The Late Show infested waters of maturity; players in that most staid of 90's phenomena, the Quality Music Award world.

The album is produced by Brian Eno, who gives it his best Zooropa-effect atmospherics, imbuing most tracks with that minimalist feeling (woah-oh, that minimalist feelin'). The result is that, like an ultra-tidy office desk, with the pens just so, it strips the songs of personality, and zip, inadvertently creating un-songs: "One Of The Three", "Five-O", "P.S." and Skindiving are all such cases. The prevailing theme is that dry, barren desert, courtesy of moody slide guitar (boy, are they keen on slide guitar) and Booth half-singing, half-speaking matters of great import. These sleep-inducing meanderings lull the listener into such a smoky kind of boredom that the smattering of full gusto anthems jolt him into startled life before once again slumping into worthy slumberland.

The Big Country-esque-hits-out-for-the-lads side of James is undoubtedly their best - notably the riff-o-rama acoustic guitars on "Sometimes", rattling away like a runaway train while Booth triumphantly hollers over the top like the most heroic man in the entire bloody universe - while "Low Low Low" and the title track are fantastically daft moments. The latter is a wonders-of-shagging song in the mould of "How Was It For You?" that comes over like a Cosmo Safe-Sex Can Be Fun article: "Dress me up in women's clothes / Mess around with gender roles"

Alas such moments of good humour, bluster and thunder are few and far between. It's almost as if James have become embarrassed by their proven knack of writing songs that lodge themselves leech-like in your brain. In many respects, "Laid" is a brave album - it dares to be boring. And, unfortunately, it is.

Laid In The UK, Melody Maker by Ian Gittins 9.93

WHEN James released "Seven" I their last album, two years ago, I feared for their soul. They sounded like they were losing their way . They were striving to be huge, forsaking their blessed intimacy, forgetting to write songs in a desperate attempt to sketch spaces big and resonant enough for Tim Booth's clever words of yearning and loss. It made sad sense that Bootf1 had to abandon words and dynamics for odd, aimless yodelling. James were straining beyond their grasp.

So I feared for James' soul, but "Laid" proves I could have slept easy. This is a prodigious return to form. "Laid" is an album which combines reflective, introspective musings with a heartening assurance, and mixes yearning and intelligence with a naked honesty which at times is genuinely stunning. James have regained their sense of vision while relocating the daffy off-kilter charm which was always their motor. They're breathing deep and easily once more.

Maybe James relearnt the art of songwriting while playing acoustic supporting Neil Young. Maybe they just took time out. Either way I where "Seven" was thin and weak, Laid is rich and redolent. "Out To Get You", the opener, finds Booth whispering "I'm so alone tonight" and craving  "the human touch"

"Laid" is a far more sparse album than its predecessor. Producer Brian Eno has thankfully banished all hint of bombast.

The single "Sometimes" is prime frantic, spindly, distracted James, hyperactive guitar giving Booth the chance to do his great whirling dervish rag doll dance on stage and chant the lovely chorus "Sometimes, when I look deep in your eyes, I swear I can see your soul". Tim can sing this and sound peculiarly profound rather than vomit-inducingly gauche. This is James' unique skill.

"Dream Thrum" is an oddly medieval lullaby before "One Of The Three" finds Booth examining his conscience again: "I need proof before belief'. "Soy Something" is a medium-paced filler, "Five-O" (no connection to Jack Lord) a mused, muted soliloquy.

"Every answer found begs another question" , decides Booth with wry resignation.

"PS", a song Booth says is "highly personal" finds him snarling "You liar" at an unidentified ex-Iover with no small degree of malice and much contempt: "All your words are dust and moonshine". "Everybody Knows", however, is one of the album's weaker moments, a bruised reflection on a previous spell of personal depression which James fail to translate to music.

"Knuckle Too Far", a hymn to on-the-road tour monotony, reminds me of U2's "Numb" through Booth's deliberately colourless delivery, and "Low Low Low" may, according to the sleeve notes, be about "the state of human evolution", but sounds like Mungo Jerry getting existential. It's the album's joke. Boom, boom!

"Laid" itself is a scorcher, Booth opening full throttle and yelling "The bed is on fire with passionate love / The neighbours complain about the noises above / But she only comes when she's on top", the saucy tinker. "Lullaby" is a poignant picture of the damage wrought by child abuse, and the closing "Skindiving" is a neat ambient curio, Booth's trademark yodel becoming an aquatic falsetto. Somehow, he manages to carry it off.

"Laid" is a remarkable rebirth. Not only have James regained all the artistic ground they lost when stadium filling fame made them lose the plot two years ago, but they've produced their strongest work since "Gold Mother". The vulnerably frank Tim Booth, back in control, is scheming and dreaming aloud again. Amazingly, "Laid" is an endearing devastating honest triumph.

Q Magazine by Paul Davies 9.93 4*

James's immediate reaction to success, after years of scuffling about in the post-punk wilderness, suggested that they were not completely at ease with their new-found status.

The bad news for them is that on the evidence of Laid, they may have to get used to the plaudits and pitfalls that go with shifting shedfuls of records. It's as striking, provocative and sharply melodic as its predecessor, Seven.

 Produced by Brian Eno, whom the band originally approached nearly eight years ago, Laid benefits from a lean, stripped down sound and it sparks with a spontaneity sprung from James's penchant for studio improvisation. The album is laden with chartbound nuggets, delivered with gusto and passion by Tim Booth in his reedily angelic warble. Songs with such powerful emotional punch as the ode to paranoia Out To Get You, the sleek, rattling Sometimes and Sit Down's obvious anthemic successor, Say Something, may soon reverberate around the nation's auditoria. They even have a tune (Low Low Low) which they hope will be adopted by England's team for the World Cup in 1994. Now that's optimism...

Boston Plain Dealer by Michael Norman 11.93

"Laid-back" might be a better title for this gentle, dreamy, new release from the British alternative rock group James.

Encouraged by a successful acoustic tour with Neil Young at the end of 1992, the six-piece band went into the studio last year intent on exploring the softer side of its musical personality. But rather than making a straightforward "unplugged" album, the members of James opted for a more complex sound, applying a less-is-more attitude to everything from composition and arrangement to production and instrumentation.

The band's previous albums were catchy, band-of-gypsies-style collections of folk-tinged rock and pop, sparked by lead singer Tim Booth's charismatic personality and baritone-to-falsetto vocals. "Laid" doesn't stray too far from that tested recipe, but strips away the pump-up-the-volume distractions.

What remains is delicate and beautiful - music that finds power in something other than raw voltage. The album is full of delightful subtlety and nuance, with Booth's bright vocal melodies rising above a quiet backdrop of mood-inducing guitars, keyboards and understated, jazz-style drumming. The lyrics have a similar daydream quality, with Booth musing on everything from love and carnal escapades to God and the future of mankind in smart, witty songs.

Producer Brian Eno is a perfect fit here, too, in light of his recent work with ambient music. He reveals the honest, human quality in the music and the chemistry between the players without relying on heavy-handed production.

That soft touch - combined with wonderful music - gives "Laid" a fragile simplicity that is irresistible. 

Sweet Baby James In Adolescent Phase by Mark Jenkins, Washington Post 7.1.94

ON ITS first few singles, James created beguilingly unexpected moments, if not always fully satisfying songs.

As the Manchester quartet grew to seven members (it's now down to six), its sound expanded even further, into the realm of Celtic sweep, with a little dance-rock influence too.

James ended up sounding like a younger Simple Minds or a less pious U2; it even hired "Joshua Tree" producer Brian Eno to supervise its latest album, "Laid."

Eno has attempted to recapture some of the delicacy of the band's initial work, and "Laid" is not quite so bombastic as its immediate predecessors.

Still, the hushed moments of songs such as "Dream Thrum" and "Skydiving" are mostly a little dull, if not unpleasant, while the memorable tracks tend to be predictable rousers such as "Sometimes (Lester Piggott)," "Laid" and "P.S.," in which singer Tim Booth petulantly accuses somebody of being a liar.

The album's most eccentric aspect is its cover photo, which shows the band members in frocks, presumably in tribute to the "dressed me up in women's clothes/messed around with gender roles" lines of the bawdy title song.

Despite Booth, James Soulfully Blends Folk and Rock by James Herbert, The San Diego Union Tribune 24.3.94

James, "Laid" (Mercury), * * * 1/2 

It's a wonder Tim Booth can sing such sweet melodies, since his lips are apparently stuck in a perpetual pucker.

Booth, lead singer and chief cynic of England's James, loves to lament life's little irritations: how he's "a member of an apelike race," how "we've destroyed our homes," how he'll be "amazed if we survive." It's the usual stuff: Boy meets girl, boy longs for girl, global cataclysm puts damper on budding relationship.

But while he's playing the sourpuss, the rest of James is playing a soulful blend of folk and acoustic-based rock that, even when it takes a turn for the dour, still glows with a golden heart.

The Manchester band, which appears tonight at SDSU's Montezuma Hall, has been strumming its way to critical praise almost since its mid-'80s inception. But the latest album, "Laid," has lofted James to a new prominence, mainly on the wings of the hit title track.

Devotees of "Laid," the song, take note: Little on the album resembles that burnished, radio-ready bit of pop, the closest thing to a love song this disc offers. Booth's acerbic observations and wounded-troubadour vocals wend through all 13 tracks, but they're mostly set to more brooding tunes that burble with atmosphere.

Only two things need be said about that last: "Brian" and "Eno." In the great index of record producers, this forever-hip guru is surely listed under "A" for ambience. His signature is all over "Laid," from the drifting riffs of "Five-O" to the dreamlike "Knuckle Too Far," which with its faintly martial tempo could be the soundtrack to the delirium of a dying soldier.

At times, Eno -- whom the band reportedly dubbed "Brian Vino" for his connoisseur's taste in wines -- indulges in too much atmospheric dabbling, as in the droning minor chords of "Dream Thrum" and the dense monotony of "Skindiving," which ends the album on a weak note. Blame it on the Chardonnay.

Booth, too, is guilty of over-reaching. With his earnest vocals on such faster tracks as "Sometimes" (a Waterboys sound-alike) and even "Laid," he seems a stranger to subtlety, and his smugness paints him as some nihilistic know-it-all.

He begins to make up for it with two other moments: On the slow, sad "One of the Three," Booth searches out nuance and sincerity, even when voicing such grim images as, "You bring forth your lamb to the slaughter." And on "Say Something," he manages to ease into the ballad's gentle embraces.

Then, toward the album's end, Booth and the band reach back and belt out a stunner: "Low Low Low," the same track on which Booth bemoans man's simian tendencies and looming doom. The track is so catchy that it makes the lyrics' absurdly bleak sentiments seem downright jolly. "Low Low Low" should rank with the Breeders' "Cannonball" as among the smartest, most satisfying pop songs of the past year.

Is Booth addressing himself when, on "P.S.," he sings, "You're sour, and now you're alone"? Maybe so -- but it's a fair bet he sang that line with at least a trace of a smile.

GREYAREA.COM - Alan Sheckter

James was formed in Manchester back in 1983. They jumped onto the British new wave pop scene with a folky sound that many critics and other musicians embraced. They've had success in England all along, and that prosperity has now saturated America. Laid was produced by legend Brian Eno. In fact, James and Eno recorded enough material for an additional double album of experimental, industrial jamming (to be released- someday).

Laid is easy on the ears. Singer Tim Booth's tenor vocals ride atop the often-present acoustic strumming and quiet electric slide guitars. Group co-founder Jim Glennie's strong bass, Mark Hunter's subtle keyboards and David Baynton's "power drums" fill out the irresistible sound. The title track and first single "Laid," a joyous piece of English acoustic pop, has scored high with American modern rock and adult alternative audiences. Other standouts are "Sometimes," which is filled with acoustic guitar strumming and the upbeat "Low Low Low" ( for which folks had lobbied to be England's 1994 World Cup soccer theme). There are moody pieces as well. The quiet "Lullabye," brooding "Dream Thrum" and whispering personality of opening track "Out To Get You" are all strong, emotional tracks. Very inventive music combined with quite fresh production, make this a winner with broad appeal.

NETCOM Albums Of The 90s

It should be noted that I knew nothing (and still don't, really) about their eighties existence as friends of the Smiths and indie reputations and all that. As for their early nineties transformation into Madchester meets Simple Minds, again, nothing to do with me! I knew they were supposedly huge and all, but that was about it. So when this ended up in my hands I didn't know what to think of it at first. But I recalled something I had heard about, namely that they had ended up touring with Neil Young the previous year on an acoustic tour and that supposedly this album was inspired by that. "OK," I think, and put it in.

And damn. Maybe more people should do that kind of opening date run with him.

I have this feeling it had to do in part with Eno, who produced this. Making this simply U2 redux would have been all too easy, and lord knows everyone was saying stuff about how Tim Booth was reaching for the same messianic level of Monsieur Bono. Except he didn't, because slight flashes aside ("Sometimes," the lead single, is rushed, windswept, rainy and almost falls apart as a result), Booth sounds like he's voicing hidden fears and thoughts rather than lecturing from up above. I mean, maybe he is lecturing from up above, but he's doing it in a way that doesn't piss me off.

As for the band, it's not all acoustic or anything, but it is all very much more a subtle thing, more so than the occasional single from the previous years that I had heard. If anything perhaps it's a return to more folky roots at points, perhaps, but with a sweep and heft and lift that makes it sound big, enveloping, embracing, the keyboards and ringing guitars and more all there but never overpowering, more suggesting, as well as a sense of quiet, understated drama that makes everything more...what is the word? Meditative, maybe, not New Agey or the like, simply reflective but in a way where you make big decisions without moving a muscle.

So that's why "Dream Thrum" has a nice build but even nicer ending, fading slowly, softly, a solitary violin playing along instead of a full orchestra reeking of 'importance.' It's why "One of the Three," perhaps the best song about Jesus ever, gently pulses, strums and plucks, as Booth ponders a two-thousand year old death with a questioning tone that never aggrandizes, just makes you think anew as to what did happen. And it's why even the more upbeat numbers that became singles by default like "Say Something" and the title track don't so much explode from the arena as just kick up their heels gently or with a little more force as needed.

And perhaps most importantly for me, "Lullaby" and "Skindiving" form one of the most beautiful and heart-catching album-enders around, period. You cannot make me think otherwise, "Lullaby" one of the softest, sweetest things around, actually what it is but with lyrics that make you cry and hope at once, "Skindiving" starting with the most-barely there of shuffling beats, gentle strums fading up, a main guitar that chimes just so, keyboards floating into space, Booth's high falsetto in the heights like a noise you think you didn't actually hear at first, all coming together. All perfect.