All the colours of you

"After nearly 40 years of existence, it is to James' credit that the listener presses play on their 16th album with little idea what to expect ... "All The Colours Of You" is a winning synthesis of James' anthemic tendencies and their more instinctive weirdness. Though much of the album reflects recent personal and global hardships, it's mostly another step in the group's restless quest for joy and solidarity. Among the highlights are "Hush", a deft exercise in stadium electronica, and "Getting Myself Into", a gleeful throwback to their earliest skittish indie".

"With singer Tim Booth residing in California, they're bi-continental these days and with their 40th anniversary looming, they're at a late-period peak. In Booth's Topanga Canyon neighbour Jacknife Lee they've found the man to give these big songs the big production they need, adding layers of richness, from the choir on "Wherever It Takes Us" to "Hush"'s techno pulse. Very much an Englishman abroad, Booth rails against Trump on the lockdown anthem title track and gets caught in a California firestorm on "Beautiful Beaches". The centrepiece, though, is "Recover", which details Booth's father-in-law's death from Covid-19: when, over the course of one heart-stopping verse, he charts a decline from sniffling to assisted breathing, it's the most moving writing of his career".