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James announce 18th studio album Yummy for April release before June gig in Leeds

James: Playing Leeds First Direct Arena in June. Picture: Paul Dixon

JAMES will release their 18th studio album, Yummy, on April 12 on Virgin Music ahead of playing Leeds First Direct Arena on June 8.

Produced by Leo Abrahams, the album will be available in CD, 2CD deluxe, vinyl, colour vinyl (marbled red) retail exclusive, colour vinyl (marbled orange) and D2C Exclusive formats.

Yummy’s track list will be: Is This Love; Life Is A F***ing Miracle; Better With You; Stay; Shadow Of A Giant; Way Over Your Head; Mobile God; Our World; Rogue; Hey; Butterfly and Folks.

The 2CD deluxe edition of Yummmy adds Pudding, a second disc of demos produced by the Manchester band’s four songwriters: Anyone But You; Close Enough; Mine To Lose; Activist Song; Won’t Be The Same; Tell Me Something; Poolewe Day 1 Jam 4; Arpen Charp; Deliver The Dawn; Something Of A Pleasure; Walk Tall and 50s Out Takes.

Boston Spa-born frontman Tim Booth says of Pudding’s 12 tracks: “Most of them contain the original music and vocals created in the initial jams – which is why many of them don’t have lyrics.

Studio Fury’s cover design for James’s album Yummy

“These are the tracks that didn’t make it to the next stage, where we would take them to all the band members to contribute and I would work on the lyrics before recording the final versions with a producer.

“We always make more demos than we use before recording an album, and we usually jam over 100 songs before choosing which to develop. It’s our way of keeping our quality high. These may be sketches of songs, but we could hear their potential, how they would develop with further work. James have always loved making B-sides as a way to hone creativity. Maybe view these as the B-sides for the album Yummy.”

Lead single Is This Love is out now. Featuring artwork by Studio Fury, who art-directed the campaign for the latest Rolling Stones album, Hackney Diamonds, the song is described as a “complex dissection of love in all its forms” as singer Booth pores over the pain, heat, battle, distance, fear, release and endurance of this emotion, in pursuit of its point and purpose.

Or as he puts it: “Love as a bomb, a Tsunami that rolls over our life as we cling to the wreckage of our peace of mind”.

James will be joined by special guests Razorlight on a tour that will climax with their debut show at the 20,000-capacity London O2 Arena on June 15. Tour tickets are available at tix.to/James24, gigsandtours.com and ticketmaster.co.uk.

Studio Fury’s artwork for James’s new single Is This Love

Booth, Jim Glennie and Saul Davies, from James, will perform with Joe Duddell and an orchestra at Music Feeds Live: A Concert To Fight Food Poverty in aid of the Trussell Trust at Manchester O2 Apollo on February 27. Box office: ticketmaster.co.uk.

In celebration of their 40th anniversary, James were honoured at the 2023 Ivor Novello Awards, receiving the PRS Music Icon Award in a year when they were joined by an orchestra and gospel choir on the James Lasted tour that visited York Barbican on April 28.

Last June’s orchestral double album Be Opened By The Wonderful reached number three in the UK official chart. Throughout the summer, James headlined multiple UK and European festivals, culminating in two shows backed by full orchestra and choir at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens, Greece, and a special guest headline slot at Latitude Festival, Henham Park, Suffolk.

After 2016’s Girl At The End Of The World, 2018’s Living In Extraordinary Times and 2021’s All The Colours Of You, Yummy continues a run of albums addressing American politics, AI technology and conspiracy theorists, all the while facing down mortality with an unbeaten smile and striving for love in a world spinning catastrophically out of control.

In the band’s 2024 line-up are: Tim Booth, Jim Glennie, Saul Davies, Adrian Oxaal, David Baynton-Power, Mark Hunter, Andy Diagram, Chloe Alper and Deborah Knox-Hewson.

The poster for James’s Live In 2024 tour dates
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James celebrate 40 years with orchestral tour & double album. York Barbican sold out

James on stage: Next spring their ranks will swell by 30 when joined by an orchestra and gospel choir

ENDURING Manchester band James will play York Barbican on April 28 on next spring’s James Lasted Orchestral Tour.

Led as ever by Boston Spa-born singer Tim Booth, this 40th anniversary celebration will come loaded with a 22-piece orchestra and eight-strong gospel choir conducted by Joe Dundell.

The tour title is presumably a nod to both James’s longevity and to the orchestral music once synonymous with James Last, the German composer, jazz double bassist big band leader of the James Last Orchestra.

All 15 dates on the 2023 orchestral tour have sold out already, including Sheffield City Hall on May 4 as well as Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall, Birmingham Symphony Hall and a Royal Albert Hall finale in London.

That itinerary will be accompanied by a double album of new versions of James’s greatest hits, fan favourites and deep cuts, plus one new composition, as yet untitled. Full details including release date, tracklisting and formats are to be announced soon.

The poster for the James Lasted Orchestral tour in 2023

Recorded at Blueprint Studios, Manchester, the album was arranged and conducted by Duddell – whose credits include Elbow and New Order – working in tandem with Orca, the orchestra assigned to the tour too, and a gospel choir.

Since playing as James for the first time when supporting Big Country at Manchester’s Hacienda on November 17 1982, they have released 16 studio albums, sold 25 million records, and enjoyed an Indian summer renaissance with a run of Top Five albums with Girl At The End Of The World, narrowly missing out on the top spot in 2016 to Adele’s 25, 2018’s Living In Extraordinary Times and 2021’s The Colours Of You.

Last December’s arena tour, taking in Leeds First Direct Arena with fellow Mancunians Happy Mondays in support, was their biggest selling and most successful to date.

Looking ahead to the 2023 tour and double album release, Booth, 62, says: “There are a number of great bands who have been around for 40 [years]. But to get here and to be having the best time of our lives. To be part of a supportive loving family that still has something to say and new ways to say it. To be turned on by every gig and song. To fall in love over and over again, Groundhog Day, with our bandmates and audience. Damn. That’s time well spent.

James, at Broughton Hall, near Skipton, in May 2021, when gathered for rehearsals and promotional duties for 16th studio All The Colours Of You. Picture: Lewis Knaggs

“We should have recorded the orchestra tour first time round, as many of you have reminded us. Well, we’ve done it now. And here comes the tour. The orchestra and gospel singers expand our palette, heighten the tenderness, heighten the celebration and, despite their numbers, somehow leave us feeling more naked and raw. It will be different, probably each night, because we are James and Joe [Duddell] knows how to dance with us. And because you are different, each night.”

Bassist Jim Glennie, 59, adds: “Has it really been 40 years? In some ways it feels like yesterday and in others, many lifetimes. A family of brothers and sisters, willing to support each other musically and emotionally. Uniquely challenging, always pushing ourselves into the new and taking risks collectively and individually, looking for transcendence.”

Joining Booth and Glennie in the tour line-up will be Saul Davies, Adrian Oxaal, David Baynton-Power, Mark Hunter, Andy Diagram, Chloe Alper and Deborah Knox-Hewson.  

Marking diaries for next summer’s outdoor concert season, James are booked in to play Live At The Piece Hall 2023 in Halifax, West Yorkshire, on July 7 and a hastily added second show on July 8, due to “phenomenal demand”.  

Already confirmed for The Piece Hall in 2023 are Madness on June 16 and 17; The War On Drugs, June 21; Rag’n’Bone Man, June 23; Embrace, July 1; Sting, July 3, and The Lumineers, July 9, with plenty more acts yet to be announced.  Box office: thepiecehall.co.uk.