#early james

Song Review: Early James - “Tin Foil Hat” (Live at WNCW)

Twitchy and raspy like Joe Cocker and a madcap finger-style electric guitarist in the mode of Lindsey Buckingham, Early James is a master of plucking the past from its anchor and plopping it in the present as something wholly new and unique.

Appearing in the WNCW studio in a power-trio format, James performed a scathing version of “Tin Foil Hat” while promoting his well-done Medium Raw LP. And the six-minute presentation is a sight to behold and a sound to behear.

James rocks on his feet, bends his knees and contorts his face while singing raspingly and playing with fire. And when his guitar locks in with the drums, the rat-a-rat effect is devastating.

Add some in-the-pocket bass and a heaping dose of cynicism and James and his band score big-time and improve upon the studio version.

Grade card: Early James - “Tin Foil Hat” (Live at WNCW) - A

Chip on my shoulder, chip off the ole block

Song Review: Early James - “Rag Doll”

Early James continues playing in the sonic past on “Rag Doll.”

The third single from Medium Raw follows “Steely Knives” and “Tinfoil Hat” and finds James toiling in mid-20th-century rockabilly. It’s a gritty, lo-fi track with music made for shimmying and shaking matched by James’ weathered, from-another-time vocal delivery.

I ain’t your rag doll, darlin’/no siree that ain’t me/got bones and blood though you may disagree/I hope you’re choking on your water/cause my thoughts ain’t made to order/no siree, James sings over a walking bassline on the chorus.

This is the kind of music folks who found James before his major-label emergence have been waiting for. Because although James is just 31, his musical soul is at least 100.

Medium Raw is due Jan. 10, 2025.

Grade card: Early James - “Rag Doll” - A

Early James is Right on Time with His “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” Rewrite

- “It felt like the tiniest thing I could do,” he says

“I hope we piss off the right people by changing these words,” Early James said before he and Marcus King played James’ rewritten version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” on a recent pay-per-view webcast.

The Alabama native told Rolling Stone he “grew up with racist family members” and some of Robbie Robertson’s lyrics for the Band song made him “cringe.” So, in his new version, a time I remember oh so well became a time to bid farewell.

And on the final verse, James sang:

Unlike my father before me, who I will never understand/unlike the others below me, who took a rebel stand/depraved and powered to enslave/I think it’s time we laid hate in its grave/I swear by the mud below my feet/that monument won’t stand, no matter how much concrete

Video of the performance is not publicly available.

It takes some serious hutzpah - big cojones - to change a song like “Dixie” by a songwriter like Robertson. But, as he watches people lay it on the line in the streets, James says his rewrite is really no big deal.

“I’m not as courageous as those people,” he told the magazine. “It was an easy stand for me to take. It felt like the tiniest thing I could do.”

Song Review: Early James - “Unspeakable Thing” (Live)

Doubling the tempo and turning a smoldering blues into a fireball of rock ‘n’ roll, Early James did an unspeakable thing to “Unspeakable Thing.”

Namely, he removed everything special about the track.

A brooding slow burn as it appears on Medium Raw, “Unspeakable Thing” is borderline unhinged on the new live version released on professional video. In speeding it up and taking the brakes off his older-than-its-years voice, James sucks the subtlety from the song and in doing so makes his typically unique presentation somewhat normal.

Not a good thing.

If this live version of “Unspeakable Thing” is your first exposure to James, forget it ever occurred and head straight for Medium Raw, which Sound Bites reviews here. This performance is not representative of James on wax or, in Sound Bites’ experience, on stage.

Grade card: Early James - “Unspeakable Thing” (Live) - F