James - All good boys

James is one of those bands that although I know them somewhat well, I don't know them that thoroughly. I mean, I know for a fact that I've not listened to a few of their albums, and some others I might've only listened a few times. I don't know them well enough to know most of their b-sides - though this might also apply to some other bands that I know much better than I do James.
I've always meant to go back and do some in-depth listening, but it never became a priority.
In 2013 I was going into the worst phase of my life - though I kind of question whether or not where I'm at right now isn't just as bad, or perhaps even worse - and one of the few things that helped me cope was music. At the time I had a 1.5 TB hard drive filled with music, and my iTunes told me that it would take me some three years of non-stop listening to get through that backlog.
One of the great things about random play is that it can produce an unexpected pearl out of some murky depth. This one was just the case; one thing I did then and still do now a lot is playing solitaire, and I almost always do it while listening to music. Usually, I'd just listen to an album to death, whatever fascinated me at the time - The National's 'Trouble will find me' being a particular favourite then.

Every so often I'd roll the dice, though, and hit that random play button. This brought me a great number of songs that I a) hadn't listened to in a very long time or b) had not ever listened at all. To be fair, not all of them were that great, most were ok-ish at best, but some, like 'All Good Boys', the b-side to the 'I Know What I'm Here For' single, was an elegant, unexpected nugget of gold that made my heart soar - still does, in fact, up to this day. Tim Booth has one of those rare, unmistakeable voices that provide a song with such effortless beauty and grace.
James is a band who found a devoted audience here in Portugal - much like The Durutti Column - and they always deliver. I have fond memories of a gig they gave for free in Cascais almost a decade ago.