By Jae-Ha Kim
Rolling Stone
April 30, 1992
Cabaret Metro
Chicago, Illinois
March 13, 1992
The British rock group James understands that simplicity can be an elegantly powerful tool in concert. On its first tour of the United States, the seven-man band played an exquisitely stripped-down show in Chicago, proving that while the hype machine may be turned on full gear, the group is more than capable of living up to any hyperbole thrust upon it.
The band has been around since 1983, and its members are stars in their homeland, but in the United States they are new faces playing a vaguely familiar sound. Charismatic singer Tim Booth’s voice falls somewhere between Bono’s plaintive wails and Morrissey’s smug crooning. But where Morrissey and Bono exude calculated self-love onstage, Booth is a refreshing ingénue, addressing the audience with shy asides and dancing with childlike abandon and the sheer exhilaration of moving.
Beginning their ninety-minute concert with “Don’t Wait That Long,” from the newly released album Seven, the musicians punctuated their fast and furious set at key moments in the lyrics with syncopated strobe lights that blinded the audience like visual grenades. “God is always a man, never a woman/Why?” Booth asked, taking a creative detour from “God Only Knows.” “He’s white and powerful and almighty and frightening/Why?”
James is a well-practiced group that knows its musical theory and expounds on that knowledge. Sprinkling their set with material from both Seven and 1990’s Gold Mother, the musicians played mesmerizing songs that battled serious subjects in four minutes. James wrestled with God and sex, love and paranoia and channeled its questions through lush pop melodies that periodically were jolted with infusions of jagged rhythms.
When the group sang its anthem “Sit Down,” the young Chicagoans who filled the Metro couldn’t do what their European cousins do and sit down on their seats, floor or each other. Packed in like sardines, the fans did manage to collectively bob and weave, unleashing a swirl of hoodies and sweaty bangs. Peering out into the audience, Booth said, “That was fun.”
That was certainly an understatement.
(The concert review ran on page 29.)
