James Bay Sony Centre for the Performing Arts March 14

Wed Aug 17, 2022 - 8:00 PM

Fri Aug 19, 2022 - 8:00 PM

Saturday Aug 20, 2022 - 8:00 PM

Tue Aug 23, 2022 - 7:00 PM

Wednesday Aug 24, 2022 - seven:00 PM

The all-time popular music is congenital on contradictions. It creates songs so immediate they stay with you for life. Information technology inspires melodies that pluck i person's heartstrings, even so can besides inspire a whole stadium to motility their feet. Pop is responsible for lyrics that speak straight to an private feel while provoking total strangers to join in a communal outpouring of emotion. The greatest pop is a beautiful puzzler. Information technology'southward fabricated by truly unique individuals like Bowie or The Beatles, Elvis or Aretha, however soundtracks whole swathes of fourth dimension. Information technology's incommunicable to imagine the globe without hearing sure pop songs in your head. It's art; it'southward product; it's way and substance, because in the rare instances when pop truly manages to residue its contradictions and marry its opposites, truly unique music emerges. Creating his second anthology, 'Electric Calorie-free', James Bay is non only aware of the precarious equilibrium needed to succeed in this pop world, but he's determinedly embraced the claiming head on. He does have an advantage though, because the Hitchin-born singer-songwriter is something of a popular paradox himself… the best kind.

Raised on a music diet of Eric Clapton and Michel Jackson as a kid, he was a dejection purist in his teenage years, served his musical apprenticeship equally an open-mic troubadour and then emerged with a series of a middle-swelling pop songs similar 'Let It Go' and 'Agree Back The River' equally he made his debut with 2015 anthology 'Chaos And The Calm'. Immediate anthems, the tracks were beautifully recorded in Nashville, earning their creator Grammy nominations, an Ivor Novello award, a nod from GQ, plus recognition that took him from wins in best new act categories in 2015 to triumphs as best solo/ male person artists the post-obit year at both the Q Awards and the BRITS. Withal when Bay took his music on the road his songs proved more than just trophy pieces, merely beating, brilliant, vibrant moments that got audiences both pumping the air… and shedding a tear. There were sell out shows beyond the earth – including major tours in the Usa and the United kingdom – dates alongside Taylor Swift, plus a host of key slots at prestigious festivals including Glastonbury, Sumer Sonic, Island Of Wight, Pinkpop, Coachella, V and Lollapalooza. Yet when at the end of 2016, finally habitation from the road, Bay constitute himself being tugged in a variety of new directions as the get-go songs for his second record rapidly started to emerge, he not but knew he had to embrace the unexpected places his ideas were pulling him, merely he was truly excited by the possibilities that lay alee.

"There's a passion and fire and that's what I'm chasing on this record," he explains of the energy that underpins 'Electric Light', every bit while it's a record that deals in frank emotions familiar to everyone, it'southward forged by the white estrus of innovation. Thus the classic, immediate songwriting that Bay has made his signature has embraced a musical approach informed and inspired by devouring records from popular music'due south cut edge. Sure, there are big choruses and moments of raw fragility, merely there'due south too forward thinking innovation, distressed acoustics and intricate, provocative sonics.

"I know some of this was non apparent on my first album – at that place were hints, peradventure – just I recollect this record helps to paint a fuller picture of who I am," he explains of the expanded musical horizons. "As soon as I recognised I was being pinned down as 'the intimate audio-visual guitar guy' I went 'nah!' I desire it as part of my arsenal, but I don't want that solely to define me. So the accented ethos of my second album has been to constantly move forward, because who wants to just stand still, when you could exist doing more, seeing more, and ultimately, being more?"

That kinetic instinct has triggered an organic evolution. At that place is no bandwagon jumping, just ideas inspired past the places, onetime and new, he's visited equally a music fan. Later on the plush surroundings in which he fabricated his debut, its spectrum-expanding successor took shape in the first half of 2017 in a tiny, stark room in east London's Baltic Studios, where Bay and his friend, Jon Green, wrote songs, played with synths, cranked-up guitars and drummed – "desperately" – on what initially might have been demos. However, it quickly became apparent that these recordings had captured an free energy and temper yous could build an album effectually. Indeed, producer Paul Epworth was so inspired past hearing these tracks that he came on board subsequently the initial writing sessions just to help tighten-up a few elements, and although the vocoder-enhanced, swelling cinematics of 'Stand Up' was recorded from scratch past the trio, 'Electric Calorie-free' has been largely fatigued directly from Bay's raw sonic sketches.

"In that location was something about that ramshackle sound that you hear in some early Bowie, a lot of LCD Soundsystem and that cut and paste feel on some of Frank Ocean's stuff, that's special. It's full of character," explains Bay of where his head was at for those initial recordings. "I was fascinated by those approaches because it isn't smoothen, it's unconventional and quickly I realised that's what I had to chase. And then, song past vocal we were aiming for that bareness, because that rawness resonates with people and then strongly. For me, it was important to identify those forlorn, heartfelt melodies I'd written against a different, rougher mural."

Canticle-in-waiting 'Wild Dearest' is a key instance of how these new sonic ideas accept flowed naturally into Bay'south own music. With its stirring emotions and yearning passion its spirit is pure James Bay, withal it's laid over a bold musical soundscape of stretched synths and smart modulations. Similarly, opener 'Wasted On Each Other' boasts the kind of mesomorphic riff guitar players everywhere – James included – indulgently dream of busting out in front of a packed house, but its chunky rock heartbreaks actually are backed up past 808s… (or rather, a JUNO-60, to be more accurate for the counterpart synth buffs).

"That's a good example of how the sounds and sonics nosotros were playing with on this record really informed how I wrote these songs," suggests Bay of this assuming salvo. "If I'd only saturday playing the guitar similar I ever take done in the by I would take written some blues stone tune I could have never used. I actually want to be able to strut a big guitar riff around a stage but I want information technology to be relevant, and the synths brand that happen. I promise that this tape can do for vocalizer-songwriters, loosely, what like Drake and Risk The Rapper are doing to their genre: tearing upwards the dominion book.

Crucially – and appropriately –  alongside this new sonic pallet, James Bay's 2d album has a thread running right through its middle that examines and embraces the notion of unity. From the gospel flecked R&B hopscotch jam 'In My Caput', via the imploring raw beauty of the anthemic 'Us', the incoherent ticking aureate transistor guitar popular of 'Pink Lemonade' and the chopped sonic blues backside the hip-swinging 'I Constitute You', this guiding sense of unity helps to navigate 'Electric Light''s expanded horizons in a strong coherent management.

"It seems these are divided times to so many degrees, scarily and then," notes Bay. Only sometimes things are worth fighting for, even if it'south hard, it's of import to stand arm in arm. I got to run into an enormous, incredible sense of unity among people, going to a lot of shows besides as playing my ain. It's similar at a football game match when you feel people come together behind the squad, it's just euphoric, and over the final couple of years I experienced the true power of unity in the near intense way you possibly can – by touring music and having people singing my songs back to me. At the same time that was happening some crazy shit was going on in the world. Gigs got bombed, among many other terrible acts that happened around the world, simply that only heightened the sense of togetherness among the crowds I saw. So unity is a big theme on the album. I'm non a religious person only I am maxim I believe in u.s. , whether that's on a personal or much wider level, at that place's strength in existence together."

This lyrical focus adds a real sense of time and identify to scenes Bay invokes inside the songs, which is further heightened by a series of spoken discussion vignettes he scripted and helped to direct that are brindled between tracks, while an Allen Ginsberg poem is sampled into the album's contemplative closer, 'Slide', to give a truly immersive quality to the whole record. This, coupled with Bay pushing his ain musical boundaries makes 'Electric Light', a new, progressive yet open and welcoming feel. "It'southward and so interesting to see what people are doing with pop right now – and what I experience I can do with my own pop music, it's exciting," he smiles of the new places making this record has taken him, adding that this desire to push himself made a bulb light-up in his caput… literarily. "I think most visuals when making music and while I was doing these songs everything was that scrap more vivid , there was a burst of energy and 'Electric Calorie-free' flooded into my listen. This record is about a real sonic and creative development for me and 'Electric Light' feels like the right sign post for that," he says of his album's title. "A bulb was the feeling behind making this music for me. For my commencement album it was probably a flame – really I've merely remembered there's the sound of a friction match hit at the start of my very ever EP! – then that's the innovation. When 'Electrical Light' came into my mind it just felt perfect."

What is undeniable from its opening monologue to its terminal notes, through sonic innovation and genuine emotion, James Bay has created a fresh classic pop anthology, a timeless bright statement for that brave new world. A contradiction? You bet, the best kind.

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Source: https://www.axs.com/events/351294/james-bay-tickets

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