As the elder statesmen of indie, James have lived through the reign of The Smiths, rode the flowered-up wave of Baggy, basked in the golden glow of Britpop, and are now gliding gracefully into middle-age with their integrity almost intact and their self-esteem only slightly damaged.
By all the rules of rock'n'roll, the Manchester band should have disintegrated in disarray years ago, fractured by the various egos within this fragile collective, or pulled apart by internal squabbles and internecine power-struggles. James, however, have survived near-breakups, emerged unscathed from failed attempts to crack America, and weathered the critical blows which followed their 1997 album, Whiplash.
Things took an unexpected upturn last year when the band's Best Of compilation elbowed its way into the UK Number One slot and stayed there for a number of weeks, selling a cool million copies. Indie's eternal bridesmaids suddenly found themselves standing at the top of the aisle. So, flush with renewed vigour, the band went into the studio and recorded their latest album, Millionaires.
Shock horror: the UK music media, who had previously dismissed James as jaded old has-beens, were now unanimous in their praise for Millionaires, and the band were suddenly enjoying a second honeymoon with the music press. "That's been very pleasant, I have to admit," says the band's singer, shaman and all-round strange guy, Tim Booth. "We haven't nearly had that in the past few years from the British press."
Booth is the band's focal point, a lanky, jerky presence with a head of tousled curls and a brain full of odd ideas. By rights, he should be a relic of the past, consigned to the rest home for eccentric old pop stars, but instead he's celebrating another hit album and getting ready to start a sell-out UK Tour, first stop Dublin's Olympia Theatre. Does Booth still feel part of the current pop scene, or does he feel like a reliable old uncle hanging out with the young 'uns? "I'd rather be kind of one of those mad uncles who just goes off to Africa for four years and comes back with stories about voodoo and wild women. I don't want to be a reliable uncle."
Booth certainly has a reputation for being impulsive and unpredictable, the kind of guy who'd go down the road for a packet of fags and instead end up joining a cult and running off to Nepal. Are you really as `out there' as people think you are?
"I do bugger off now and again," answers Booth. "Not cults. I did a cult in my 20s, and that's like a `never again' situation. But I do like investigating the paranormal, whatever that might be. I'm very interested in altered states, as I think most of Britain is, but most people just use alcohol and drugs, whereas I try to use more ancient methods of going into trance states."
What those ancient methods actually entail, Booth is not saying, but he does firmly believe that he's travelling on a spiritual journey.
"Yeah, in general, I think I am, as everybody is, but I do make it quite conscious and go looking for people who I think have got some interesting ideas and methods and techniques to share. I just love that kind of stuff. It really feeds me. It feeds my lyrics and it feeds my experience of life."
Booth is more likely to be seen hanging around with herbalists and healers than drinking with his band-mates, but, says Booth, there's no secret to the alchemy which has kept James together for 16 years. "It's always the music. It's very simple, really. We all get inspired by songs and sounds. We're writing new songs all the time and we all get really excited by what each other does."
Booth admits, however, that their most famous song, Sit Down, became a bit of a weight around the band's neck. "There have definitely been times when I haven't wanted to play it, but people in the band have said, come on, we've got to do it, and most of the time I've let them talk me round to it, and most of the time it's actually turned out right.
"That song's got a life of it's own, it's just been voted the number 8 best lyric of the millennium. And it's like, when that sort of thing happens, you've just got to surrender to it. It's out of my hands. But I would like to give it a rest for six months and then play it again to see how it feels."
THE current album may not have an indie anthem of Sit Down's stature, but songs such as Just Like Fred Astaire and Someone's Got It In 4 Me prove that James won't need to give it a rest just yet. The music was mostly written by the band's guitarist, Saul Davies, and most of the production duties were handled by the Professor of Pop himself, Brian Eno. The closing track, Vervaceous, sees Booth sharing vocal duties with a certain Mother Mary Bernadette aka Sinead O'Connor. You can accuse James of peddling Old Adult Indie, but you have to admit that Millionaires delivers wads of mature, well-crafted rock.
"I think the media is more shocked by the fact that we keep on going, and that we haven't burnt out along with the bands that we came up with. But we're not so shocked because we always tried to make music that would last."
James play the Olympia on Monday and Tuesday. The album, Millionaires, is out now on Universal.
