The Morning After The Night Before Review

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(More customer reviews)Whenever I have everything by an artist, and they release a new album, I go back to the beginning and listen to all of their albums in sequential order before formulating a review for their new work. In the case of James, I first heard them when "Laid" was released back in 1993. Since that time I have bought everything they have done, plus gone back and bought all their earlier material. I even bought both Tim Booth albums. After listening to everything and then looking over the few reviews here, I realize James fans are weirdos.
These two eps, "The Morning After" and "The Night Before" are not very different for James. It sounds like James, no better or worse than most of what they have released during their entire career. I don't get these people saying that after "Laid" the band went somewhere else musically. Hardly. Most of their changes actually came before "Laid". After that, the just continued to refine their formula, most of the time succeeding.
I did what "The Night Before" told me to do in the lyric booklet to download the free track "Mother's A Clown", then I spent the last two weeks listening to these eps. I found that reversing the order (i.e. listening to "The Night Before" first, followed by "The Morning After" last, improved my listening experience). Still, there are 16 tracks here, and four could have easily been left off. Those four being "Got The Shakes", "Fear", "Mother's A Clown" and "Shine". Two more tracks that could have been overlooked might be "Dr. Hellier" and "Make For This City", thus making a solid 10 track album.
The best tracks are "Ten Below", "Hero", "Porcupine", "Tell Her I Said So" and "Kaleidoscope".
The sound of both eps is similar to what they have been doing on "Hey Ma" and "Laid" and even "Pleased To Meet You". The band does not so much reinvent the wheel here as they hold steady. I do not believe they have pushed the limits since 1999's "Millionaires" album, merely held steady. They're a great band, highly underrated, experimental, but somehow never achieved greatness and popularity like U2 has.
In essence, the band could have trimmed the fat and released a more solid 10 or 12 track album here instead of two 8 track eps. Here's how "The Morning After The Night Before" compares to their previous work:
1986 Stutter: Two And A Half Stars
1988 Strip-Mine: Two And A Half Stars
1990/1991 Gold Mother/James: Three And A Half Stars
1992 Seven: Five Stars
1993 Laid: Five Stars
1994 Wah Wah: Two And A Half Stars
1996 Booth And The Bad Angel: Three And A Half Stars
1997 Whiplash: Four Stars
1999 Millioniares: Five Stars
2001 Pleased To Meet You: Four Stars
2004 Bone: Four Stars
2008 Hey Ma: Three And A Half Stars
2010 The Morning After The Night Before: Three And A Half Stars

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JAMES have released 10 studio albums, sold more than 12 million albums worldwide, and have had twenty U.K. Top 40 singles. The U.K.-based band are best known in the U.S. for their Brian Eno-produced 1993 album Laid, which resulted in the huge modern rock hit singles "Laid" which went to #3 and "Say Something" (#19) resulting in a top spot on the Billboard 100 Chart and a gold album. Now, JAMES are set to release a two-CD set, The Morning After The Night Before, on September 14 via UMe and embark on an 18-date U.S. tour, their first since the release of 2008's Hey Ma. The tour is set to kick off on September 20 in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, and wraps in Los Angeles, CA, on October 13 at the Music Box Theater. The Night Before takes James' knack for uplifting songs about insecurity, disaffection and mental illness to a new level, and The Morning After has an intuitive, low-key "campfire" feel featuring some of the saddest, darkest lyrics Tim Booth has ever come up with. James are: Tim Booth (singer), Jim Glennie (bass), Larry Gott (guitars), Saul Davies (guitar, violin), Mark Hunter (keyboards), David Baynton-Power (drums) and Andy Diagram (trumpet).

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