Songs From The Darkest Hour
TIM Booth reverses the camera on his computer to show me the view from his balcony. He points out an iguana crouching a few feet away, a blur of luminous lime scratching at the base of a fruit tree. “They fight and fuck on the tin roof above us,” he says happily. “Then you hear this noise, like something falling 30 feet.” Sex and death in close proximity. Quintessential James. In the background the Costa Rican countryside stretches out beneath a big sky, blue on green on brown. Looking radiant in a robe, Booth turns the camera back around and smiles. “It’s a long way from Manchester.”
For the past 13 years the James vocalist has lived with his wife, dance maestra Kate Shela, and their teenage son, Luca, in Topanga Canyon on the fringes of Los Angeles. Last year, they were smoked out. “Within five miles of where we were living there would be wildfires nearly once a week,” says Booth. “They get put out quick, thank goodness, but if there’s a wind then you’re in trouble. We’ve lived with our bags packed and our most precious possessions by the door for three or four months of the year for the past few years. It was only a matter of time. California is going to become climate-change inhospitable. There’s a slow exodus starting but it’s going to become a big one.”
The move to Costa Rica is a test run for a permanent relocation: “My wife is a healer through movement work, and she’s been coming here for nine years. Me and Luca had been once before and loved it.” During lockdown, Luca has surfed every day. Booth recently took the plunge on his 61st birthday.
The family exodus is recounted on “Beautiful Beaches”, a rousing track from the new James record, , an album that thrums with a sense of urgency both timely and slightly remarkable for a band entering its 40th year. Later, will catch up with founding member, bassist Jim Glennie, from his home a few miles outside Ullapool in the remote north-west of Scotland. The same day, multi-instrumentalist Saul Davies Skypes
