‘The Morning After the Night Before’
Album Review
***1/2 (3.5-Stars)
By Anthony Kuzminski
{Buy the album HERE}
Second acts in music are as rare as a T206 Honus Wagner baseball card. Once a band takes pause, steps away from what they do (aka “break-up”) things are never the same. Egos grow, bank accounts fatten and that youthful drive once full of optimism and exuberance is flat-lined. Most reunions happen because the collective members have fallen on their faces on their own. Even when an act pulls it together for an impressive assembly of tunes, it often doesn’t even come close to their preeminent material. However, Manchester’s James is a wholly distinctive band that is booming in their second go-round. After singer Tim Booth informed his band mates in 2001 that he would be leaving the group, rumors swirled James would merely find a new singer and continue onward. They didn’t and what followed were five-years of silence. However, in early 2007, the original band reunited with guitarist Larry Gott (who left before the release of Whiplash) and trumpet player Andy Diagram, reuniting the Seven line-up for the first time in 15-years. A new hits package (Fresh as a Daisy-The Singles) hit stores, the band toured Europe and then holed themselves up in a studio before unleashing Hey Ma in 2008; a pseudo-social collection of pop songs with bite, it was their best album to date. Shifting between the search for internal salvation and commentaries on the state of the world since the band hung their hats up (in December of 2001), they dumbfounded all with a record that captured all their power while still finding a way to stagger even the most committed devotee. Hey Ma ranked as my fourth favorite record of the decade and over 2-years later, I still think it’s one of the most grandiose records I’ve heard in the last two decades.
Instead of following Hey Ma with another album, the band made the peculiar decision to release two EP’s. In Europe this past April The Night Before a poppy collection of 7-songs hit shelves and just this month, The Morning After was unleashed; a more meditative and faint collection of 8-songs. In America, it’s being released as a double disc set entitled The Morning After The Night Before with the latest EP up first. At first listen, it’s easy to dismiss the songs on The Morning After as fragmentary or lacking punctuation by the rest of the band. However, this is one of those records where you must excavate. It’s easy to let the studious musicianship and production lose you (recorded in 5-days), but if you listen closely to singer Tim Booth’s lyrics, you soon discover the somnolent assembly is intentional so as to not disguise the weighty and serious stories. “Got the Shakes” is a serene introduction and a confessional from someone stressed to reign in their life, their addictions and so much more. It almost feels as if it’s a curtailed song (it runs less than 3-minutes) but delicately leads into the sobering piano of “Dust Motes”. “Tell Her I Said So” is a plea of desperation with a warning of waiting to be careful what you wish for. The narrator shuns his extended life wishing for death. “Rabbit Hole” sung in a falsetto by Booth at the end, repeating the title over and over again. The swirling strings of “Lookaway” show hints of their folksy British pop but it’s “Kaleidoscope” which is the show stopper. It has the most distressing concluding line of any James song ever. The narrator believes his wife is having an affair and he wonders how he can’t afford a divorce, what will he tell his children and why his wife is deceiving him with long walks and blocked phone calls and then the songs final lines wallop us; “There’s no answer to the cancer/ We don’t have much time”. As the final word is hushed, the song lingers at the forefront of your mind. He was mistaken; it wasn’t an affair but a terminal disease with a far more distressing decree. These characters struggle with addiction, long for peace and reflect on previous wishes they wish would not have come true. The aching pain of heartache seeps its way through the songs. These are songs about life, how we’re thrust into the middle of chaos and circumstance sometimes beyond our control.
The Night Before is a better showcase for the band’s melodic powers and it seems bewildering (at first) that the US release would house these songs on the second disc. However, considering the severity of the lyrics that imbue the first disc, it provides the listener with a more festive and elevating end to the listening experience. “It’s Hot” finds the band radiating their inner strengths in a swelling anthem of faith and devotion. “Crazy” continues the euphoria led by Diagram’s trumpet. “10 Below” with its shimmying guitar and ingenious drums evoke the paranoid aesthetic they previously flexed on “Hey Ma” while the album’s final cut “Hero” has possibly one of Booth’s greatest lyrics (“We all want love without the grief”). The Morning After struggles with circumstances beyond their control whereas The Night Before they allow the listener to not be as weighed down by circumstances beyond their control, and they can live a little.
If listened to close enough, The Morning After the Night Before is an album that vocalizes your intimate secrets with anticipation you may do something to ease those uncertainties. Every once in a while you hear a collection of songs that capture you fears, your hopes and your struggles. These 15-songs embrace the bloody vividness of life. There are silver linings of hope, but most of the songs reflect on the wistful wreckage of our bodies and minds. There is a thorny immediacy to these stories as the band pulls the listener into their tales of yearning where these characters are fighting with their place in life and you know what? So am I. At this particular time in my life, I’m dumbfounded by the state of the world, overwhelmed by circumstances beyond my control and searching for some solace in the world. It’s been a while since I’ve heard someone who can encapsulate my struggles in a fashion where they practically stole the thoughts from my head and heart. While far too many acts try to cuddle the world, James takes these themes into our lives and our homes on a much more intimate level. Some of these songs contain chords and melodies made for stadiums and others could be spoken word poems performed in a cottage. The songs are more developed than Wah Wah, yet not quite as polished as Seven, Millionaires or Hey Ma. Ultimately The Morning After The Night Before is not a step forward or backward, but the band flexing their muscles amidst a flurry of musical styles showcasing the more off-the-cuff writing side-by-side with their collaborative musical efforts. It’s definitively James and even though it’s a slow burner, if you listen close enough, you’ll be entranced and understand completely why these 15-songs are split across two individual and enlivening EP’s.
Anthony Kuzminski is a Chicago based writer and Special Features Editor for the antiMusic Network. His daily writings can be read at The Screen Door. He can be contacted at thescreendoor AT gmail DOT com and can be followed on Twitter
