Music Arcades: James: Pleased to Meet You

There's a new James mini-album out on Monday (and a second not far behind that). I think this could be the first time since Seven, 18 years ago, when I don't get the new James release automatically as soon as it's available. Hopefully it'll be on one of the streaming services, so I can check it out first.

The thing is that, even with their first post-reunion album, they've stuck to what made their name, and not pushed it out any more. They may pay lip service to the risk-taking that characterised their 1983-93 years, but that's all it is. While getting the Spotify link below, I couldn't help notice the syndicated allmusic review, which claims, "it isn't just another good James record — it's their best." Actually, no, just another good James record is exactly what Pleased to Meet You is.

Brian Eno was on board as (co)producer for this album, just as he is for the new album and for Laid and one or two others. Via Kevin Kelly's blog, I recently re-read Kelly's 1995 interview with Eno, wherein the latter is quoted,

a lot of what I find myself — surreptitiously — doing as a producer is thinking of elaborate diversionary tactics designed to make us leave things alone — at least long enough to listen to them as "audience." I find that when you're listening with a view to doing further work, you don't generally hear the totality of something but just the little gaps where you could squeeze in something else. Audiences, I find, nearly always appreciate more space and emptiness in a work than the creators of those works would like to tolerate.

Pleased to Meet You feels insufficiently left alone (whereas Laid is beautifully left alone). Having 2¾ guitarists in the band can't have helped with this, all of them on the alert for gaps where they could make themselves heard.