Tim Booth Bone

There was a time when Liverpudlian band James were everywhere. From their incredibly popular flowered T-shirts to their ubiquitous anthem "Sit Down,” it was hard to avoid them at the peak of Britpop in the early ’90s. Yet try as they might, they never managed to recapture those glory days and their later albums were, quite frankly, pale imitations that never measured up. So when singer Tim Booth decided to leave the band in 2001, it really didn’t make the waves that it might have five years earlier. Since then, Booth has been busy, spending his time on his acting career and writing a screenplay, but it was just a matter of time before he returned to music again. Bone doesn’t sound remarkably different from the album Booth would have made if he hadn’t left his previous band in so many ways. Just like every James album had at least a couple of interesting songs, Bone isn’t a complete waste of time. Booth has been around long enough to know how to create music that has some redeeming qualities, but it speaks volumes that the best song is a re-recorded version of "Please Fall in Love with Me,” one he co-wrote with Angelo Badalamenti for their 1996 album Booth and the Bad Angel. It looks like Tim Booth’s best musical days are behind him, so let’s hope that his big screen debut in Batman Begins is more convincing than this very average record. (Koch)