The double album features not only career highlights from his 15 albums on the label, but also two additional brand-new tracks, ‘Hard Times Of Old Edinburgh’ and ‘The Time Was Short, But I was Happy’.
‘La Magnifica’ is a career-spanning retrospective featuring tracks from James’s earliest days with the Athletes, through his Yorkston / Thorne/ Khan experiments and finally onto his recent Swedish adventures via collaborations with Nina Persson and Johanna Söderberg.
Blending songs from albums ranging from his debut ‘Moving Up Country’ to the Alexis Taylor-produced ‘The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society’, ‘La Magnifica’ is a testament to James’s monolithic creative output.
About the album, James states: “With this compilation I was trying to cover each era of my songwriting. ‘La Magnifica’, the song itself, is from the very, very beginning. The lyrics say, ‘What would you say If I offered this all up and moved like a wreck to the Neuk?’… which is what happened… And most of the songs on this compilation were written after I moved back home to the East Neuk.”
TRACK LISTING
Summer Song
Queen of Spain
Sweet Jesus
I Awoke
Tortoise Regrets Hare
The Lang Toun
Little Black Buzzer (feat. Lisa O'Neill)
St Patrick
Broken Wave (A Blues For Doogie)
Woozy With Cider (Jon Hopkins Remix)
La Magnifica
Would You Have Me Born With Wooden Eyes
When the Haar Rolls In
A Moment Longer (feat. Nina Persson)
Struggle
An Upturned Crab
Oh Light, Oh Light (feat. Johanna Söderberg)
Hard Times Of Old Edinburgh
The Time Was Short, But I Was Happy
Dinked Edition Bonus CD:
1. First Aid Kit - With Me, With You
2. Gruff Rhys - A Droplet Forms
3. Rozi Plain - The Lang Toun
4. Alasdair Roberts - Choices, Like Wide Rivers
5. Josephine Foster - Hold Out For love
6. Jon Hopkins - Heron
7. Nancy Elizabeth - Sweet Jesus
8. Adrian Crowley - Shipwreckers
9. The Tubs - A Moment Longer
10. The Elidas - Tender To The Blues
11. UNPOC - Summer Song
12. Alexis Taylor & Bonnie “Prince” Billy - Embers
