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James - Hey Ma

Last year James released a Best Of ..Singles compilation entitled Fresh As A Daisy and went on to play a series of concerts at Brixton Academy as well as the V and T In The Park Festivals. In September the band headed off to Warsy Chateau in northern France to write and record what was to become their first new record in seven years.

Their brief may have been immodest - "to not only match our earlier work but surpass it" - but the results are somewhat more spectacular: a record, Hey Ma, that recaptures the spirit of Laid and catapults James into the pantheon of artists who are more alluring and even more relevant second time around.

Warsy Chateau proved to be a unique working environment. Producer Lee 'Muddy' Baker (who'd worked with Booth on his 2004 solo album Bone) allowed the band to build their own studios in their rooms and constantly fed ideas back to him in the main studio. He also allowed the band to jam at leisure, something that always brings out the best in them - if you remember, Sit Down came out of "a twenty minute jam that only ended 'cos we were laughing too much to continue" - and ensuring a degree of spontaneity that had been lacking in the final days of James Mk1.

The band wrote eight pieces in one five-hour spell and a hundred and twenty in total for a record that finally boasts twelve songs that are as good, if not better, than anything James have recorded before.

Hey Ma, the song, features some pretty strong imagery about falling towers and "dust in the air" and is probably as cutely subversive as Country Joe & the Fish singing "1-2-3. What are we fighting for?" although its hugely memorable chorus,'Hey Ma, the boys in body bags,' is, if anything, more shocking for the jaunty way in which it is delivered. Booth concedes that "it could have been a great pop song" by which i think he means a great single, as it's already a great song - "if it weren't for the lyric." He also admits that "protest songs don't work for me - I just like things with a weird edge!" although he could just as easily be talking about another song called Upside that Booth wrote about immigrant labour trying to provide for their families back home.

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