BONE - TIME OUT REVIEW

Maybe it was the whole "vegan in a cardigan" thing about early James or the fact that Tim Booth used to dance onstage like a vicar being electrocuted, but we just don't tend to expect something lush, funky and seductively poppy from him. However, James had some extremely groovy moments and Bone, despite a lyric on one song that goes "I've been the Nazi, I've been the Jew" is a delight.

"Bone" has its contemplative moments, the aforementioned line comes from the soul searching epic Discover and Fall In Love is a beautiful little love song. But what Booth seems to have accrued in the three years since acting, writing and DJing took him away from James, is a more relaxed idea of what his sound should be. The album opens with a flurry of heady rhythmic anthems and then goes on an almost psychedelic journey on Falling Down. Booth even flirts with the kind of lowslung pop drawl that Bono might do if he could ever tear himself away from those other three lovely Irish fellows.

I'm not sure if it's the cover image of him and his partner getting silly on a beach on holiday snap kind of mood, but it definitely feels like there's some fun going on. Okay, maybe we don't need him to drool "My silent thoughts can't penetrate your ipod with my foreplay", but that song (In The Darkness) excepted, this is just what we need for the summer.