My Review: James - Laid

 My Review 

James - Laid ( 1993)

"When you're flying, listening to the music of James, you forget to glide, having endless fuel."

Alex Dematteis - 12 May 2016, Llandudno

Quoting yourself may look tacky, but I think it's perfect for what I've been feeling since 1986 and it's perfect to start writing this review.

In the absolute certainty that so much revolves around the feeling of love and its derivations, the art world has emphasised relationships and described their particularities often with bitterness, sadness, painting them as open and motivational wounds, as an essential lymph for one's inspiration and with a determined willingness to spend time, energy and resources to illuminate their face.

Then there are the aces who take all this to a spiritual level, combined with enveloping, dynamic, powerful, effervescent music.

We are in Manchester, in 1993, James write their fifth album 'Laid' and on 1 November they release their second single, the title track of this immense work, which will give them success in the United States.

Laid is a meadow of folk music in a state of excitement that makes the Mancunians run towards a flight: two minutes and thirty-seven seconds are enough to find ourselves, with them, in the exosphere where it is possible to watch the story being told, with lucidity, in the knowledge that with them the lack of oxygen is not really a problem, because all the vital organs, galvanised, work perfectly.

The song precedes a different direction that the master Brian Eno, who joined them, will propose and support for a long time.

So this track becomes even more important for its ability to summarise the history of the Manchester boys now adults, who find here a way to be cryptic but joyful in Tim Booth's lyrics and resoundingly impetuous in the music, where the semi-acoustic guitars of Larry Gott and Saul Davies inspire Mark Hunter's Hammond organ to become a sky in total opening, like a simple but powerful embrace.

And then there's David Baynton-Power's drumming that drags us along with his warlike drum rolls, supported, as always, by Jim Glennie's amazing bass, which is silk that gently wraps everything up.

In the version I am proposing, Andy Diagram plays an important and fundamental role, blowing vibrant and warm petals with his magic trumpet to give the song more pathos and sensuality.

And we mustn't forget Adrian Oxaal (in the absence of Larry who has left the band in the meantime) who, with his electric guitar, gives the whole piece even more vigour.

What is irresistible finds perfect definition in this live track, which becomes an opportunity to touch the heart of Mancunians because it shows energy, tension, mystery.

All in the name of the quivering that enters the collective frenzy to make us smile like crazy in the ultimate atmosphere.

The story being told, between the state of lucidity and its assimilation, and the absurd and difficult to understand one, comes from observing a couple externally until throwing the voyeur inside, where the psychological side is only apparently found as a defining element.

But once again Tim reveals his majesty by confusing the cards, managing to make us sing almost as if we were lost, but at the same time giving us the confidence in him that has never failed in us throughout his career of perfectly fantastic lyrics...

We find ourselves, absurdly, in a psychotic state, where everything takes on the tone of joy, despite the fact that the words can be, finely, a sharp knife that divides what it seems from what it really is, as further confirmation of the talented Tim.

We dance, or rather we fly with our eyes open, our legs absent, spinning without gravity and the desire to become singers in our turn, even without a licence, up to the falsetto which, while in Ring the Bells had shown its power and intensity for many seconds, here is shorter but just as effective.

We end up in Fairytale Land, without black characters capable of obscuring and extinguishing our strength.

Here everything becomes a colourful magnet that draws us in and makes us gape, where smiles become breaths and flames of joy, despite the confused interpretation of the lyrics.

When you vibrate you forget, you move to an exaggerated but essential sensory plane, which does not desire an end and this is one of the benefits and mysteries of music.

Songs like wine that ages and becomes better and better with the incandescent mystery that the glass does not empty, granting us the infinite taste between the lips of our feeling, always so delighted and in need: Laid is the evident demonstration that magic cannot be analysed but must be lived and that the true ecstasy is to free oneself from weights by learning to fly.

Because with James the sky really is an infinite mystery where fear is not allowed...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld 

Salford

March 11th, 2022

Laid

2019 Live Version

https://open.spotify.com/track/7JRvBQCJHdGgqetsH1wEBV?si=OYFPi_6sRMCtKLeccBs1GQ