James Grant, Harbour Arts Centre, Irvine. Saturday 9th December.
James Grant has a dry, wry sense of humour, punctuated flawlessly by pin-perfect comic timing. “D’you know where that cover shot was taken?” he asked me a few years ago as I offered him my copy of Love And Money’s debut LP to sign. “We were in the Mojave desert. It’s sunset and I’m standing on top of a railroad train. The orange glow of the setting sun has captured perfectly the silhouette of me and my guitar and my out-to-here quiff.” He gestures the impressive length of quiffage as he signs the cover, hands back my sharpie and, lip curling into a self-conscious smile of pain, looks me in the eye. “What a fanny I was.”
He’s a brilliant live act, is James. From the jangling-clever Friends Again through the west coast soul (Scotland, not California) of Love And Money, to his solo records – records that ring with skilfully-picked acoustic guitars accompanied by a rich, caramel voice that has aged like a decent malt, James has the songs, years and years of them.
And he has the stage presence. He’s languid, perched cross-legged on a bar stool, his always sartorial self folded around his acoustic guitar, elbows and knees jutting out like a particularly stylish Scandinavian angle-poised lamp. He speaks in a slow and rich Glasgow burr, quietly, and his audience goes respectfully silent in his presence.
He begins both of his sets on Saturday with a lovely, understated take on Friends Again’s State Of Art. Where the original is all gated drums and rattling, jangling, downhill-without-the-brakes-on semi-acoustics that will be forever-tied to the ’80s – and magic for it, let it be said – the 2023 version has relaxed a bit, stretched its legs and grown more into itself. The words (sung originally by Chris Thomson) are enunciated clearer, the chords are strummed slower, the rich melodies pulled from the six strings like an alchemist teasing liquid gold from cold metal. A state of art indeed.
What an opener and stall-setter. For an hour and a half, James treats the audience to faithful and expertly-played takes on songs that run the whole gamut of life, the double weights of death and existential angst being seemingly particular favourites. My Father’s Coat, Lips Like Ether, Hallelujah Man, Whisky Dream, Winter (“the closest you’ll get to a Christmas song from me“), brush past naked and true, their modesty covered in low-bowed and heavy, sympathetic cello, played superbly by cellist-about-town Maya Burman-Roy.
Now and again, James will take the edge off the downbeat nature of the performance and lighten the mood by dropping in a funny story or two. Stories about his dad make regular appearances. As do tales of life in a chart-chasing pop group in an era when the business was awash with cash. Sometimes the subject matter combines. His dad would end up being in the video for Love And Money’s Jocelyn Square, immortalised on celluloid with his permanent nasal drip captured forever in monochrome. “Who’s paying for all this pish?” inquires his dad on-set, eyeing up the machinations of the industry. “Eh, I am, dad,” says James sheepishly.
As funny as his stories are – and James has some real rippers – it’s the music that endures. James is a fantastic guitar player, often sounding like three guitars at once, his combination of augmented chords and rippling, tumbling lead fairly giddy and awe-inspiring when seen up close. It dawns on me mid-set that James is one of my favourite guitar players. He can pick the fuck out of six strings, but where many acoustic players use Travis picking or a similar pattern of finger playing, James very much favours the plectrum. And not just any plectrum either. I notice, on his bar stool at the close of the show, that he’s been playing the set with a Bowie Aladdin Sane pick. Even heroes have heroes. Watch that man!
Plain Or Pan 