Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Slowburning Beauty - A Return to Form, October 18, 2001
Years ago, after hearing - I mean really hearing - 'Laid', it became one of those timeless fantastic albums that you couldn't get tired of. The multi-layered slow builders - one instument carefully threaded on top of another - sometimes subtle, sometimes overt - but each adding to the final adrenalin rushing creshendo. Then suddenly it stops - all to start again in the next song. Just brilliant!Then a couple of dodgy albums - 'Millionaires' being particularly weak. Ephemeral pulp - perhaps a wink at the mainstream in mind, but very misguided. Deep waters just aren't any good at pulp. Witness Bono or Ed Kowalcsyk's miserable forays into MTV-ville. So now - 'Pleased to Meet You' landed on my table without much excitement. Halfway through 'Space' I was interested again - a couple of songs later I remembered why I was such a huge James fan. The Jameses have remembered what is uniquely theirs - the simple lyrical, incremental, subtle pop song. Its incredible how good the three chord wonder can sound in their hands. Outstanding tracks are: Space - long ethereal build up to a classic James song. Goes forward adding slowly to the wall of sound until the abrupt end five minutes later. An object lesson in not rushing the climax. This is what James are all about. English Beefcake - Driven by a simple but beautiful bass line. Haunting guitar and keyboard melody. Great lyrics. A somewhat strange outro leaves you uncertain if you've moved onto the next song or not. Pity about the WhoaHo stuff at the end.... . Junkie - Up front miked accoustic guitar (think Everlast - Whitey Sings the Blues). Unhurried shuffling drums. Sounds like Tim's singing with a peg on his nose but he's got issues worth crooning about. Pleased to Meet You - Probably the darkest track on the album and the most memorable for it. Starting with a simple repetitive guitar refrain with a spacey keyboard background. Enter the brushed snare - eerie chorus line - pregnant scary bass bridge - wham! hit the distort button. Needs to be played loud and often. Alaskan Pipeline - Beautiful filmic endpiece. 'You mother me, I son you'. Say no more. Genius. Although Britney Spears probably couldn't give a hoot - there is still good music being made and selling too!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It's JAMES!, October 18, 2002
This CD turned out to be the last studio effort by Tim Booth w/ the rest of the band named James. ...This means for any James fan out there, this album and the subsequent live album "Getting Away With It...Live" are musts to own, for they mark an end of an era of 20 years of Tim Booth as lead singer.Musically, this album is very good. The bass play in "English Beefcake" is very Cure-esque with long bass notes driving the rhythm. "Junkie" reminds me of The Church with it's sublime feel and social commentary. The title track "Pleased to Meet You" starts slow and hypnotizing, but don't be fooled! Your speakers better be able to handle the guitar at 3:40 into the song! It'll wake you up on a long drive, that's for sure. "Senorita" is an upbeat song with a strong chorus and verse that explores the lines of love/lust/worship. "I'm addicted to you/I hope we're going to pull through/I'm addicted to you/You're my love, my Senorita/I'm addicted to you/you're the god that makes me stronger/" On "Falling Down" and "Fine", one hears James experimenting w/ basic dance rhythms that don't dominate, but rather enhance the "mellow" of the album. All in all this is a solid album. Nothing to get worked up about in a negative sense, except that it almost makes one downright sorrowful for passing of the Booth era of James.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not Their Best, But Still Quite Good (Swan Song, perhaps?), June 10, 2003
Sadly, this may be the last studio effort from the great English band JAMES. If it isn't, then it is most likely the last to feature their charismatic frontman, Tim Booth. Following the release of this album. Booth announced he was leaving the band in December of 2001.
JAMES seemed to really hit their stride with a string of singles in the early to mid 1990's. Though they could never maintain the momentum, they continued making excellent music (check out their amazing 1999 release, "Millionaires.")
PLEASED TO MEET YOU finds the band as experimental and groundbreaking as ever. This album has a true sense of the band looking forward, to the future, to, ironically, the bands future.
The lead off track, SPACE, is text book JAMES: spooky, bizarre, at times hilarious, and downright catchy. The lines "you've gotta get over yourself" will reverberate in your head for quite some time.
Another real stand out is the song GETTING AWAY WITH IT, a dark, twisted anthem with more catchy tunes and cutting lyrics.
THE SHINING and GIVE IT AWAY are two of my other favorites.
So, why then, am I only giving this 4 stars and not 5 if its so damn good? Well, while I admire the sonics and the new direction the band seemed to be going in with disc, the songs, with the exception of the four I have mentioned, simply aren't as consistently strong as the ones on LAID, WHIPLASH, or MILLIONAIRES are.
Still, this disc is very good and proves, yet again, why JAMES are/were one of the most talented and underappreciated bands out there.
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