James Bloomsbury Theatre

JAMES

Bloomsbury Theatre, London

I CAN well understand that the male myths of rock 'n' roll idolatry weigh like a nightmare on the minds of today's more sensitive youths. And I can equally understand why one would want to avoid any hint of lumpy bits lurking beneath — they ambled on for a warmup acoustic set. What followed was a whole string of insipid folk dirges that oozed pre-packaged profundity and mock vulnerability, made all the more irritating by the antics of their singer, Tim Booth.

Stumbling about the stage with what looked like a pair of Cornish pasties on his feet, his studied amateurism got right up my nose. Somebody should tell the poor boy that singing off mike, smilingly benignly like a holy idiot and blowing snot into a hankie, is not the last word in radical stagecraft Rather, it's gauche and ugly. Not the expressive ugliness of a Pere Ubu, but a neutral creepy ugliness.

An hour later the cornish pasties were back, this time with an electric backing. It was still the same beatnik-rave up at a Christian Union social but now tarted up with some Velvets-style guitar thrashing in which Timothy achieved catharsis by whirling like a dervish. And on and on it went, Camberwick Green bass lines and overfussy drumming underscoring a set of ludicrously pretentious lyrics. One song seemed to be set inside a coffin: “Black hole/l need nothing/l'm all alone/l'm everything I see". Every suffering, as Marx said, is a form of enjoyment and boy, does Timothy enjoy his suffering.

But why, if the band are so bad, do they command such a loyal following? Snob appeal. They attract the kind of snooty sixth form pet mentality that feels itself to be above the vagaries of the pulp-pop market place. But James, by standing up there on stage and demanding four quid to see them, are as much a part of the zany world of consumer capitalism as Duran Duran are.

FRANK OWEN