Bearing in mind it was pieced together predominantly on his laptop in various bedrooms and front rooms around the UK, young Birmingham-based singer/ songwriter JOHN JAMES' debut album "The Forecast" is an extremely accomplished body of work.
There again, considering John debuted at the legendary Ronnie Scott's in Birmingham and has played the length of the UK supporting notables such as Juliet Turner and Adam Masterson, you might suspect he'd know his way round a good tune, and so it proves over the course of the eclectic, but always songwriterly "The Forecast" as John really puts his muse and his musicians through their paces.
Opening tune "Waiting For You" gives you some idea of James's capabilities in terms of arrangement. Built around a supple acoustic framework and given a kick by drummer Tom Hooper's brushed shuffle beats, it showcases John's close-miked, Paul Heaton-ish vocals and finds country-inclined strings and slide guitar caressing to great effect and never detracting from the song itself.
From there on, "The Forecast" is split fairly evenly between pop-rock and jazz-pop aspirations and it seems John's pretty handy at both. Songs like "Deep Blue" and the excellent "The Promise And A Pipe Dream" show off John's rockier edge. The former is smouldering pop with depth and pepped up by John's own strategic trumpet blasts, while "The Promise..." finds fork-tongued electric guitar fleshing out the mildly funky backdrop and is reminiscent of a gutsy Paul Weller.
Elsewhere, John's jazzier side comes to the fore on tunes like "Robin Hood's Bay" and "The Day I Noticed You". The first of these is John in superficially breezy mode a la Ben Watt, but the music's sunny vista nicely masks the lyrical insecurity, while "The Day I Noticed You" brings out the Chris Difford-style storyteller in John and begins with the great couplet: "I'm not accustomed to walking into doors/ It's not too common you pick me up off the floor" as our hero catches his first glimpse of his potential Mrs.Right.
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Occasionally the jazzy lightness of touch can sound a little forced, especially when John lets sax player Dan Foster squiggle all over the song, as he does on "Sleep Dust". "Summer Season", also, suffers from a similar approach, although I like the fatalistic lyrical approach. Besides, only an English singer/ songwriter could possibly open a track called "Summer Season" with the sound of a torrential rainstorm.
But John has further strings to his bow, as both "Goodbye Amity" and the closing "An Ending" make abundantly clear. The former is slow, stark and sad, with tangible shades of Elliott Smith. The restrained use of strings is impressive too, as they wrap and caress, but never threaten to choke the song. "An Ending", meanwhile, is an epic full stop, with John building a sublime, mid-paced pop belter with big, big horns and plenty of Ian McLagan-style organ. It has a stonker of a false ending and a dramatic reprise that even Dan Foster's Lol Coxhill splurges can't destroy.
John James, then, is one of those great discoveries who just seems to blow in on the wind. The reality, of course, is a story of hard work and independent cottage industry hard graft as well as musical ability and songwriting nous, but now "The Forecast" has finally arrived, it suggests getting caught in both John's emotional squalls and sunny spells will be rewarding in the future.
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