Tim Booth and James have spent the last four decades proving they have no interest in playing it safe, and Living in Extraordinary Times is yet another testament to their ability to evolve without losing themselves. This is a band that has never chased trends, but somehow they’ve remained relevant by sheer force of honesty, ambition, and a willingness to dive headfirst into the chaos of the world. And chaos is exactly what fueled this album—Booth describes the last few years as if we’ve all collectively wandered into a Philip K. Dick novel where basic reality is up for debate and world leaders make decisions like they’re being dared to. “It’s like we went down some kind of wormhole,” he says. “Everything is burning upside down. We’re in the Stranger Things upside-down.”
That turbulence seeped into his writing, even if he never sets out to be “political.” “I’ve only ever written eight political songs,” Booth insists. “It’s not a genre I’m a big fan of at all. But when you’re writing from your gut, you can’t help but react to what’s going on in the world.” That explains the urgency of Many Faces, a song that delivers a chant-ready chorus—“There's only one human race, many faces, everybody belongs here”—that has quickly become a live show anthem. “We started playing it before the album came out,” Booth recalls. “People would burst into tears and then start singing it back at us by the end of the song, even though they’d never heard it before.”
Then there’s Heads, an absolute monster of a track that plays like a hypnotic protest march against AI surveillance, authoritarianism, and the ever-growing absurdity of modern leadership. “That one had us giggling with laughter when we first heard it back,” Booth says. “It came from our engineer messing around with the rhythms, recording water bottles and iPhones dropping on tables. But it ended up being one of our favorites on the record. And yeah, it’s full-on political.”
Of course, it wouldn’t be a James album without some existential wrestling, which we get in full force on What’s It All About?, the six-minute closer that ends with a question instead of an answer—because really, what else can you do when the world is this unhinged? “I’ve always been trying to work out what it’s all for,” Booth admits. “I’ve been meditating since I was 21, I’ve gone into trance states, I’ve done all kinds of deep dives into consciousness. And in the end, you only ever find answers for yourself.”
James has always been an oddity in the best way—a band that somehow dodged every label people tried to stick on them. They never quite fit into the Madchester scene, Britpop, or any of the other movements they were lumped into. “We’ve been an awkward band to place anywhere,” Booth laughs. “We just do what we do.” Maybe that’s why they’re still here. He shrugs off the idea of being “press darlings,” but there’s no denying that this record has earned some of the best reviews of their career. And if the recent surge of younger fans is any indication, James is aging in reverse.
After 34 years, the band is still operating on instinct, still making albums that are as unpredictable as their live shows, and still proving that if you stick around long enough, you can actually become cooler over time. Now, they’re already writing again. “We’re all day writing,” Booth says with a grin. Whatever comes next, it’s not going to be boring.
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