James started out in the early 1980s as just another Manchester band trying to make it big, struggling for attention for the better part of the decade before 1990's Gold Mother finally closed the deal and made them famous. But it wasn't until James reinvented themselves with producer Brian Eno for 1993's largely acoustic Laid that they were revealed as more substantive than their broad-stroke arena-ready rock previously indicated. Out went trumpet player Andy Diagram, in came a sound close to what the Waterboys deemed "the big music," songs at once anthemic and spiritual, though rarely explicitly so. Whiplash kept the ball rolling, but by the time James reconvened with Eno for the underrated Millionaires and its follow-up Pleased to Meet You, it was clear the band had peaked. Singer Tim Booth departed for a solo career (as well as some ill-advised adventures in facial hair), the rest of the group went on hiatus, and the world moved on.
A James reunion a mere six years later seems a little lame at first, even if the band never officially broke up, but at least the group has tried to keep things interesting. Hey Ma actually represents the reunion of the band's pre-Laid line-up, with Diagram back in the fold as well as guitarist Larry Gott, who had departed after that disc. There's also a sense of unfinished business, given the lukewarm reception to James' last two records-- neither Millionaires nor Pleased to Meet You initially even merited a U.S. release-- so one might presume James went into the studio with both everything and nothing to prove.
Most intriguingly, James have split the difference sonically on Hey Ma, at once recalling their crowd-pleasing roots and their subsequent experiments. In a way it's not unlike the compromise U2 have struck with their own recent work, except that James have never fully been able to buy into that band's brand of bombast and bullshit. Indeed, amidst the platitudes and vague social commentary coursing through much of Hey Ma is a renewed sense of mirthfulness that cuts through much of the pretension. This is the same band, after all, photographed in dresses eating bananas on the cover of the otherwise ultra-serious Laid.
Not that James (or at least Booth) aren't above the occasional burst of bullshit or pretension. The title track may be the most belated response to September 11th imaginable, even if it does make the unlikely chorus of "Hey Ma, the boys in body bags, coming home in pieces" come off like some surreal rallying cry. Later, in "72", Booth takes aim at religion, and particularly Muslim fanatics, with his rhetorical jab "You're going to murder in the name of god/ What kind of god you dreaming of." Lines like this seem distractingly contemporary from a band not always known for being topical, while at the same time oddly backdated, as if this song (or these ideas) had been sitting around for a while only to be aired now.
