Live review: James at Middlesbrough Town Hall

Some – and I’ll put my hand up here, much preferring something hitherto unheard or not played for donkey’s years to an old favourite I’ve seen performed a zillion times previously – but most, it would appear, want hits, hits and more hits, then, if an encore is forthcoming, even more golden oldies for afters and ideally nothing new and definitely not an obscure B-side from the 1980s.

That’s an expectation veteran alternative rock act James have managed well since first having hits to contend with from 1991 onwards, especially in festival contexts when playing for audiences potentially unfamilar with anything beyond what was on their two greatest-hits albums to date.

Though always keen to give new material an airing, they’re fully aware that the attention of a large proportion of their audiences might well wander if too many songs go by without a memory of a long-ago Top of the Pops appearance being evoked.

Last night’s warm-up show ahead of a string of summer dates was a perfect example of that.

A third of their 18th and latest album, last year’s Yummy, their first non-compilation chart-topper since their formation in Manchester back in 1982, made an appearance in a 19-song set lasting an hour and three-quarters – namely Better With You, Stay, Way Over Your Head and Shadow of a Giant – and they were accompanied by five songs from their four preceding all-original LPs, plus a 2018 EP track and a relative deep cut from 1994’s Wah Wah, but they were offset by eight best-of dead-certs dating from before their 2001 break-up ahead of the reunion that followed six years later.

Said golden oldies – Come Home, Sit Down, Laid, Say Something, She’s a Star, Tomorrow, Sound and Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) – sparked regular influxes of punters prompted to head to the bar by more challenging choices, accompanied by exuberant dancing echoing that of band frontman Tim Booth, but, as time goes by and they become less unfamilar, more and more post-reunion tunes such as 2021’s Beautiful Beaches, 2018’s Leviathan and 2014’s Moving On are being given equally-warm welcomes – and the same will no doubt apply to tunes from Yummy as well before too long.

Booth himself even opted to go for tried and tested at one point after bungling 2016’s Attention and – lacking the confidence for a second stab due to being under-rehearsed, this being a warm-up show, not that James are strangers to fluffing the occasional line without that an excuse, to be honest – the 65-year-old threw the towel in and resorted to Come Home instead.

Sit Down, their answer to Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water or Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, is another golden oldie restored to favour with the frontman and his eight bandmates in recent years after previously being dropped from sets or only played reluctantly to appease audiences and even then often in rearranged formats, and it’s good to have it back in all its drums-driven magnificence as it’s definitely more a timeless classic than a blast from the past of nostalgic appeal only.

Next up for James is their only Scottish date of this summer.

That’s at Ayr’s third Pavilion Festival, at the town’s Low Green this Friday, May 2, with Starsailor and Vistas on the bill too.

Tickets for their South Ayrshire show cost from £56. For details, go to https://wearejames.com/live/

Other shows they’ve got coming up include sets at Warrington’s Neighbourhood Weekender on Saturday, May 24, and the Isle of Wight Festival on Sunday, June 22.