Another James gig and much as I did following the Bristol warm up back in March, in the aftermath I find myself writing about a track I had not fully appreciated. Until it was experienced live.
This was no warm up gig, this was the first in a trio of Irish shows slap bang in the middle of a run of summer festival shows.
It brought us all the way to Galway for our first gig on the West Coast of Ireland, to a proper Irish and vibrant party town, the beating heart of traditional Irish music, where there was a busker on every corner and live music in every pub.
For the James gig we found ourselves in a big tent, the 3,800 capacity Heineken Big Top at the Galway International Arts Festival. The tent may have been billed as a big top but it felt pretty intimate and small compared with the arena dates that had followed the Bristol warm up.
For the band it was only their second visit to Galway, their first being in the early 1980s as the support act to The Smiths.
I had been plotting an Irish West Coast trip for some time but it seems I needed the Galway gig and stopover as a catalyst, two nights in the nation’s cultural capital before we headed south west to Castletownbere on the far western tip of the Beara Peninsula for kayaking and seals and all manner of wild times on the Wild Atlantic Way.
To be sure of the barrier we queued up from the late afternoon onwards and were duly rewarded for our patience, front of house for Tim’s front stage walkway.
And when the gig started it certainly wasn’t long before Tim was amongst us, the third song Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) saw him take the plunge, with Chloe too joining him for an epic and anthemic Way Over Your Head just a few songs later.
The appearance of Getting Away From It (All Messed Up), which had been a notable absence in Bristol, was proof (if more was needed) that James like to resist the lure of the nailed down tour set list and chop and change with abandon, often defying expectation (and sometimes even appearing to surprise themselves) on the night. James are well known for their fluid and ever evolving set lists where no banger was guaranteed its place, meaning that they are a band for whom seeing them twice, even on the same tour, will always be worthwhile.
And so it proved in Galway as other big hitters that were AWOL in Bristol quickly followed Getting Away with It such as Ring the Bells, She’s a Star and a truly epic Sound. Not to mention a sprawling and thrilling Sometimes (Lester Piggott) which closed the main set to an incredible and very festival style reception.
And I finally broke my James gig jinx by witnessing that song. Yep they played Sit Down in the encore, just before Tim’s final trip to the walkway for Laid.
But back to the main set and my Irish highlight: Beautiful Beaches.
Another track which to my shame had somehow passed me by on record (the lead single from 2021’s All The Colours of You) but which proved incendiary live and got a great reaction, with its duelling drummers breakdown played out against a graphic big screen backdrop of blazing forest fires.
Here was a track born to excel in a live setting, an indie anthem primed for lift off, with its Springsteen-esque lyrics of escape and freedom, to hopeful new post pandemic new beginnings.
Racing, we’re racing down to those beautiful beaches
Put your foot down to the floor
Racing, we’re racing down to those beautiful beaches
We’ll take our chances
Take our chances
Burning down the houses
We’re surrounded
Take our chances
Get out of Kansas
Escape
Time to escape
Time to escape
I only found out afterwards that Tim wrote this song as a direct response to the devastating fires in California, which prompted his moving his family back from Topanga Canyon to the UK.
After the gig we retreated to our digs, the Skeffington Arms or “Skeff”, the most rock ’n ‘roll establishment in Eyre Square and part of the historic fabric of Galway City since 1850. Every room had classic lyrics painted on the ceiling. Knowing this in advance I was kind of hoping for the Oasis room featuring Today is gonna be the day but no complaints really that we got Queen and Is this the real life in ours.
But never mind the hotel rooms, the Skeff itself was a magnificent and cavernous temple to drinking with six bars spread over five floors, and post gig we made straight to Grace’s Cocktail Lounge, Jane for an espresso martini and me for a…..well it just had to be Guinness, with that long wait for it to settle adding to the anticipation.
The Skeff was the perfect post-gig late night party hub and when the live music stopped, the DJ quickly switched to indie anthems, with James tunes naturally to the fore, as we happily made our way back to our room next door.
