Booth and the Bad Angel: Booth and the Bad Angel

Is this the best James album of the '90s after Laid? Probably. Except that it's not a James album, obviously. But it has just about all the things I like about James present and correct.

Although I really like the album, it makes me feel guilty. I remember playing it on heavy rotation in the car in Dorset in the summer of 1996, just after it came out, and while Please Fall in Love With Me was playing I was thinking (in vain, of course) about a woman other than the one in the passenger seat. She (the latter) liked the album too, but she hated Butterfly's Dream with lines like "And now she waits / Full of hopes and future plans / While I just hope for one night stands" and "While kissing her I want her sister / Is there no end to my desire?". I was not so averse. Somehow Tim Booth seemed to know better than I did what lay three years ahead, which he had already charted. He has an uncanny knack of singing what I almost dare not admit to myself, matched only by Douglas Coupland's ability (for a few years) to write the same.

MusicBrainz entry for this album

Comments

[medwyn]

Indeed a very fine album and one that I still enjoy listening to, but I do think that Wah Wah has the edge as being their best album.

[David]

Thanks, Medwyn. I'll get to Wah Wah another time...