Our Daily Beard – 11/02/13

Good moon day!

Two bands are touring this year which will be overlooked by a lot of people, particularly the younger crowd.

They also happen to be among my favourite bands.

Fleetwood Mac and James. Not together- that would be amazing and weird!

But yeah, they are both touring, Fleetwood in the September region and James going April style.

I’m definitely going to see one of these, money allowing. Hopefully James, who are touring with Echo and the Bunnymen (who I’m not so familiar with honestly).

To the casual observer, James are pretty standard midlander Britpop merchants of the 80/90s. Everyone has heard Sit Down, which is a great tune, but it falsely paints them as one hit wonders and happy-go-lucky types. It’s an old story: the song which is the most simple, repetitive and catchy gets picked up and used ad nauseum.

The fact is that James do have a certain hippy-love quality at their core (nothing wrong with that, as they present it in a mature fashion, as a kind of plea for humanity rather than preaching). However, they are also still recording and have 12 albums under their belts which grow and develop along with the times. Their last couple of albums? Scathing, political in places, emotional, very current (without becoming pop) and with a lovely dark undercurrent. Plus, on top of that, they still have an originality that some modern bands on their first album fail to produce. All this and still the seed of peace and love buried deep within, mirroring their flower motif remarkably well. Check out the last few albums, including The Morning After and The Night Before.

Plus, how can you not like a hippy band whose frontman played Mr Zsazs in Batman Begins?!

Anyway. Show, don’t tell, right?

Peace out!

[sociable]