Category Archives: Side Projects

In theory, this could have been complete arse. After three years’ silence, James singer Booth has hooked up with veteran composer Badalamenti for a semi-improvised ambient pop opus, with Brian Eno and Bernard Butler coming aboard halfway through. Imagine all those egos in one studio. Passengers 2, anyone?

And yet this is a glorious triumph of pop over pomp. James were headed towards these wide-open horizons anyway, but cutting loose seems to have freed Booth to truly soar. From the moment he swoops in over the anthemic ‘I Believe’ – wherein Badalamenti’s soft, ambient waves lap mellifluously against Butler’s leisurely twanging – Tim’s feet barely touch the ground. “Why be a song when you can be a symphony?” the singer beams, encapsulating the widescreen feel of this entire album.

Bathed in the same spectral half-light Badalamenti employed for his Twin Peaks and Julee Cruise projects, Booth croons euphoric lullabies like ‘Please Fall in Love’ with woozy grandeur. In the slinky funk-out ‘Dance of the Bad Angels’ he smooches like an indie George Michael, while the majestic final track, ‘Hands in the Rain’, twinkles into infinity, melting away to a warm afterglow.

But all is not lofty detachment here. Booth’s lyrics still babble about healing, inner children, astrology and other such New Age gubbins, though thankfully they’re undercut with a lusty exuberance and a self-mocking humour. Even sex, that force of nature which has little Timmy running scared on ‘Laid’, is heartily embraced in the frazzled mantra ‘Butterfly Dreams’, with Booth cheerfully crooning: “I’d love to sleep with the whole town”

This is a mighty album, with only one or two flawed experiments – and hopefully, Booth will maintain this standard on future James albums. In the meantime, just sit back and wallow in that rare phenomenon, a truly inspired collaboration.

Pop seems to be riven with collaboration fever at the moment, as everyone from Tricky to the Prodigy goes in search of ever more unlikely people to work with. As far as this goes, Tim Booth, whose day job is as singer with the English group James, has outdone them all. Angelo Badalamenti is best known for having composed the ethereal soundtracks to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet, and his capture by Booth is quite a coup. On the whole, Booth and the Bad Angel sounds more like a James record than a Badalamenti one, veering as it does between up-tempo pop and often self-consciously dark slow-burners. For all that, it does contain traces of the composer’s textural genius – he thinks of his sound as “tragically beautiful” – in the ambient sweep of a synthesised string section here, the tentative lilt of a piano line there. Essentially though, this is a souped-up rock album, a James album with extra weird bits and a few good tunes, and it’s pleasant enough.