The enduring language of James
More than three decades after Laid cemented their place in British alt-rock history, Manchester’s James are heading back to our shores for the first time since 2018. Their show, built around the landmark 1993 album, lands at Red Hill Auditorium on Thursday, October 8, with Razorlight in support and tickets on sale now. Ahead of their jaunt to Perth, MICHAEL HOLLICK caught up with multi-instrumentalist Saul Davies to find out how one of Britain’s most enduring bands keeps getting away with it.
James formed in 1982 and, bar a few years off, has never really stopped. What has kept the engine running?
I’ll be honest, I don’t really know how big James still is out there, but then again, I don’t think any of us have really known, and even if so, it’s not something that drives us to get together and play music. I think we’re all okay with the uncertainty of whether people will turn up for us. What keeps pulling me back is something harder to manufacture, an authenticity to the band, a live, improvised quality that never quite repeats itself. That’s the thing that keeps giving, tour after tour.
Sounds like the band takes a different route when compared to another Manchester band with hits in the ’90s that just reformed?
*puts on thick Mancunian accent* ‘Yeah, man, it’s not about being the fookin’ greatest for us, man’ (laughs). It’s not an ego thing for us. And thinking about it, I’m not even sure it necessarily is for that lot either. I would say both groups feel a certain sort of blessedness that people still look to us. That’s what’s special about music, isn’t it? It traverses time and space; it’s magical.
Along with this current tour, the biggest news in the James space this year has been the release of your first authorised documentary, Getting Away With It. What was it like watching your own life play back at you?
Well, talking about connecting to people, this went out in 149 cinemas. I couldn’t believe it when I heard that. I’ll admit there were moments I was less comfortable watching it in a cinema seat next to my 19-year-old daughter. There’s a scene at the back of Lollapalooza in 1994 that involves me setting fire to my own pubic hair. Mortifying, honestly. But if the film wasn’t a bit excruciating in places, it probably wouldn’t be telling the truth.
Do you know if there is a plan for a wider release of the documentary?
I think so. There’s nothing locked in yet, but I’m sure it will go out on Netflix or something similar in the near future.
The documentary highlights that James has been going for the best part of four decades now, on and off. What’s the actual glue that holds a band together that long?
It’s not chemistry, and it’s not friendship exactly; it’s a language. Something that only exists when we are together in a room playing together. Like no one has to open their mouths, except for (lead singer) Tim, of course, but we all just understand one another in those moments. And once you’ve found a language like that with other human beings, walking away from it makes no sense. You do need to keep moving, however, to avoid stasis.
Australia didn’t see James until 2016, very late given how long you’d been going. You came back quickly in 2018, but it’s now been eight years. What kept you away, and what brought you back?
Well, personally, I missed the last Australian tour through illness. And my fill-in who came out in my place was genuinely a real professional. Which, naturally, worried me a bit. If the guy’s that good, does the band even need me back? (laughs)
But as to why we didn’t come out to Australia before 2016, to be frank, Australia is genuinely the other side of the world for us. It’s not a quick hop across the Channel but a proper haul. And once we got there, we discovered that while everything did look deceptively familiar to us, it does actually run by its own rules entirely. So that difference made it definitely worth it, it was something new for all of us.
This leg probably won’t turn a profit, if I’m honest. But, as we discovered on our other tours out there, there’s a kind of sonic resonance that’s already made the journey ahead of us, a sense that our music has reached people out there long before we have. Showing up in person is how you honour that. The money doesn’t really factor in.
That idea of resonance circles back to the unspoken language you mentioned earlier. How does that connect to what people actually experience at a James show?
That resonance is really just another way of talking about the language; pop music. And I think pop is hugely underrated as a form; It’s doing something an essay ten fucking times its length couldn’t manage. I think that’s because any song holds something unique unto itself within it. For example, I’ll stumble on a melody on guitar and think surely someone else must have already thought of it, and they have, plenty of times, but it doesn’t matter, because what makes it land is the specific moment it arrives in. It’s the same logic behind our live shows. Nothing scripted, nothing choreographed. Tim might end up climbing the rafters mid-song, and that unpredictability isn’t a flaw in the show; it is the show.
What can Australian fans expect from the setlist this time round?
This tour is built around Laid, the whole album, start to finish. That’s the first time we’ve done something like this, so it’s exciting in that it’s something new. We will of course throw in some other hits and whatnot. No two shows are ever the same.
Speaking about that, you have had great chart success with your recent release. Your latest outing, Yummy, went to number one in the UK—the band’s first time reaching top spot. How do you explain that, and what’s next?
Honestly? We got together, we did it, and there it was. No grand theory attached. What I’m more excited about is what’s next; we’re back in the studio this year working on the follow-up with Australian producer Catherine Marks (Wolf Alice, PJ Harvey, boygenius). If Yummy connected the way it did, it’s because it was honest and unforced. I think that’s the same thing that explains everything else about this band.
Lastly, after everything, the documentary, the tour, all these decades, how would you sum up the James experience?
That James has never really been a slick operation, and the near-misses and embarrassing home-video moments aren’t a bug, they’re the actual appeal.
James play Red Hill Auditorium on Thursday, October 8, 2026. Tickets are on sale now from ticketek.com.au
