For decades, the city has been a stronghold, a place that carried the band when they needed it most and never really let go. There’s history in that loyalty. James have long shared stages with fellow Mancunians on the rise—The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, and tonight that northern lineage continues with Doves in support.

 

The Cedar Room drifts around the venue with a late-night but emphatic groove, while the percussive power of There Goes the Fear and the anthemic Black and White Town remind us of evocative gems in the band’s canon. It’s understated without Jimi Goodwin on bass and vocals, but an absorbing display nonetheless.

 

Tonight, though, Glasgow belongs to James. As Tim Booth put it to this writer recently: “Glasgow is always astonishing… we felt like we were being lifted to another level… they are the most passionate crowd in terms of how they sing and respond.” When Booth greets “the 30 people who haven’t been to a James gig before,” he advises there’s no fixed set-list and that it’s not going to be a slick show.

 

Dressed in a towering, slouching woollen hat, half streetwear, half Cat in the Hat, the band opens with Tomorrow, followed by Waltzing Along, with Tim Booth quickly breaking down the barriers between stage and audience. He’s in the front rows, then gone, reappearing high in the second tier during Say Something, singing among fans, moving through the arena like a restless mystic.

 

The next song, She’s a Star, requires a quick check-in with bassist Jim Glennie and underlines the earlier point: this isn’t precision-engineered. P.S. locks into a groove somewhere between U2’s widescreen rock and the percussive pulse of Bowie’s Panic in Detroit, via Bo Diddley. James gigs are instinctive and free-flowing, and all the better for it. Chloë Alper, on backing vocals and guitar, adds a fresh spark, along with Debbie Knox-Hewson on drums.

 

Come Home still carries that 1990 urgency, its house rhythm pushing the room to the brink. Then one of the night’s defining moments: Booth lifted above the crowd during Getting Away With It (All Messed Up), a surge of bodies and voices carrying him across the floor. The scene has a biblical feel. Sometimes brings a pause – it’s here that the audience’s reverence feels almost tangible.

 

Brian Eno once described this song as one of the highlights of his musical career, and hearing it live in Glasgow, it’s easy to see why. They close with Laid, sending the crowd out on one last rush.

 

They run out of time, and there’s no Sit Down, but it doesn’t really matter.

 

A kind of communion has taken place between band and audience, one lifting up the other, feeding off the same sense of being one. For a couple of hours, it feels less like a concert and more like a spiritual experience.

 

Even as we walk into the cold night air, the fans are far from finished; they continue to sing – they are taking this with them.

 

James, at OVO Hydro, Glasgow