James

James is not a person. That’s the first fact we need to clear up. The second is that their best song is “Sit Down” (which was infamously beaten to the top of the charts by a certain Mr Chesney Hawkes).

The band has been recording and performing together for most of the last thirty years and has produced so broad a range of music with a fluctuating line-up that they are hard to categorise. Once they were folky, then they mastered late-‘80s jangly guitars, recorded an excellent live album and saw their record company go bust. Then their sound matured: they neatly side-stepped the Madchester scene while riding on its coat-tails to popular acclaim, became big on American college radio with “Laid” and recorded an album of experimental tunes with Brian Eno. They’ve worked with him since too.

I first saw the band perform live at the Leeds Town & Country Club in 1992. They could have filled bigger venues but they chose instead to perform an acoustic tour in preparation for their upcoming gigs with Neil Young. Stripped of their electric backing, some bands flounder. Not James. The band understands the importance of melody and in Tim Booth they have a singer whose lyrics poetically expose his vulnerabilities. Their 2011 tour with the Orchestra of the Swan and Manchester Consort Choir similarly demonstrated the strength and versatility of the band’s music.

Yet this band’s sound can just as easily fill arenas. In Manchester, their home, Booth will gladly walk among the audience of the Arena as he sings before returning to the stage for the band to unleash the full power of its art. In conclusion, this is a band which will adapt its sound to the venue and whose next step can never be predicted. See them at a venue near you.

Another (more modern) outfit spurred on by Manchester's Hacienda, Doves are revered as one of the sharpest UK rock bands of recent years. Although bearing sonic similarity to Guy Garvey's Elbow, with the mournful gravity-ridden vocals, sprawling rock sagas and axe warmth, Jimi Goodwin, Jez and Andy Williams (and Martin Rebelski, the unofficial 'fourth Dove'), achieve different goals. There's a small-town, everyman vibe, a kind of down-to-earth grit that Elbow – though great themselves – have glided away from in their Olympic-sized ballads.
Live, Doves keep things simple and let their music do the talking. Tracks like “Jetstream”, “Kingdom Of Rust”, “Pounding” and “The Cedar Room” are rapturous bundles of taut energy and slick riffery, backed by thumping rhythms and Goodwin's wistful croon. There's a harrowing nature to some of their cuts, so expect to have the hairs on your neck raised. The three-piece (four-piece) might not whip out the dancers, trampolines, t-shirt cannons or fluorescent lighting, but they don't need to rely on gimmicks to ensure people leave utterly thrilled. Their music is more than enough.
Goodwin may be on his lonesome now, after the band decided to go on hiatus, but he's keeping busy with a support slot with... Elbow.