LATER...with Jools Holland (02/05/2008 - Series 32, Show 5)

Not sure about this week. A real mixed bag of the great and the not so great with some awful vocals at times. I’m not sure if the mix was all wrong for some of the bands. Anyway here goes:

Tuesday live

• James - Waterfall
• Pentangle - Let No Man Steal Your Thyme
• Operator Please - Just A Song About Ping Pong
• Eddie Grant (Chat with JH)
• Melody Gardot - Worrisome Heart
• Humphrey Lyttelton tribute
• The Gutter Twins - Idle Hands
• Mable John with Jools - No Matter How She Done It
• James - Laid

Friday

• James - Hey Ma
• Operator Please - Get What You Want
• Pentangle - Light Flight
• Mable John (Chat with JH)
• The Gutter Twins - Idle Hands
• Mable John with Jools - No Matter How She Done It
• Liam Finn - Second Chance
• James - Upside
• Laurie Anderson (Chat with JH)
• Melody Gardot - Sweet Memory
• Operator Please - Just A Song About Ping Pong
• Eddie Grant (Chat with JH)
• Pentangle - I’ve Got A Feeling
• The Gutter Twins - God’s Children
• James - Waterfall

This week belongs to James. In every way the band was the best thing on both shows and rightfully got top billing. Tim Booth may look different, now with shaven head and beard but his vocals are still there. The band, even if they are the same who scaled Britpop in the early 1990s, are also brilliant. Three new tracks plus a spirited rendition of Laid to end the Tuesday show. Only Upside was a bit too long.

An exciting prospect was Operator Please, a new young band from Australia. They looked, and played, like kids too. The Tuesday version of Just A Song About Ping Pong is a glorious mess with the violinist way out of tune. They seemed to hold it together though and the Friday version was much better. The wonderful Get What You Want started badly, again the violinist sounding off but she pulled it back and the last half was good. They are a great prospect and are obviously having fun.

In contrast, 1960s folk outfit Pentangle have reformed. They are all accomplished musicians and yes the vocalist is a bit shaky these days but it was all sooooo dull. I’m a huge folk fan and whereas I don’t want to hear sexed up new-wave folk-pop, I like good songs. Let No Man Steal Your Thyme was a strain and classic Light Flight sounded far too outdated after Operator Please on Friday. As for I’ve Got A Feeling, it is horrible folk-jazz with agonisingly bad vocals.

Speaking of bad vocals, I was really looking forward to The Gutter Twins. The band were too loud on Idle Hands and Lanegan’s trustworthy growl sounded strained and flat. On God’s Children everything was a mess - Dulli was ok in parts but the harmonies didn’t work and by the end Lanegan, who never smiles anyway, did not look happy. There looked like some real tension between them a the end. Maybe it was just me?

Jools’ special guest this week, in a repeat of the Eartha Kitt format, was Mable John. They had a chat about a new film she is in and then the duo performed No Matter How She Done It. Like the Kitt performance, Tuesday was spontaneous and fun and a bit shambolic in the middle. Friday was better timing but not as good, like a rework. Again, the same as before.

The other interviews, again were not will performers. For some reason Eddie Grant was on to plug his ‘best of’, upcoming tour and Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday in Hyde Park. I suppose that is worth talking about but I wanted to hear from James and Operator Please. What made this worse was JH showed Top Of The Tops footage of Grant obviously miming. Not a great advert for live shows. Jools also talked to Laurie Anderson - again I don’t know why other than she was in town doing some show and she’s recently married Lou Reed.

The last two acts were actually quite good - Melody Gardot (that has to be a stage name, right?), a kind of smoky jazz singer, performed Worrisome Heart on Tuesday and Sweet Memory on Friday. Liam Finn was a real talking point. The first half of Second Chance was horrible falsetto and his female singing partner provided nothing. Then it all goes a bit insane, he stops singing and she bangs some blocks for a bit, then he gets onto a drum kit, perversely while the guitars still play from somewhere and she wails like a banshee. At the end it looked like they were both going to collapse. Stunning.

On the Tuesday live show, Jools paid tribute to Humphrey Lyttelton which was a nice touch. He showed some archive footage of Humph playing with Big Joe Turner. He really was a great trumpet player.

So, some good, some bad. The Gutter Twins were a real disappointment - the live sound just wasn’t good. Operator Please are exciting but need some polish. I’m sure JH meant well getting Pentangle in but it all seemed a bit pointless. Only James proved that sometimes it is worth trying again…