BONE : TIMES REVIEW 10.6.04

Over two decades of record label and personnel pitfalls, episodes of hash psychosis, trend-bucking and trend- riding, James showed that they were survivors. And here is their frontman Tim Booth making his own comeback of sorts. Bone is exactly the loose-limbed, stripped-back (hence the title) and spacious record that James should have made, but being a seven-piece, never could.

Neither could the over-staffed Mancs, for all their Madchester association, truly groove. Monkey God draws on throbbing acid house and African dynamics, Love Hard simmers sultrily, and Falling Down and Discover revisit the Achtung Baby-era U2 side of James, evoking One’s lean urgency. Latter- day James would never have given Down to the Sea the haunting simplicity that it gets here. In other words, Booth has rediscovered his mojo.