The Jesus and Mary Chain
Albert Hall, Manchster
23rd March 2024
Two dates in Manchester by the Jesus and Mary Chain confirms them to be a band as prophetic, powerful and timeless as they always bloody knew – by Ryan Walker.
Between loving rock ‘n’ roll and hating it, you’ll find the Jesus and Mary Chain. Since they loved it enough to destroy it in the 80s when the Reid brothers weaponised feedback to lace sweet honey-coated ’60s lullabies with a heavy, heroin murkiness, a flesh-eating variety of white-hot punk speed from the streets called ‘psycho candy’ – the band has been consistently stretching the perceptions of what it takes to love rock ‘n’ roll and equally – by shoving something else down its throat, innovated by the numbness of teenage, suburban inertia and supercharged by the early flash of punk- deplore its preconceptions.
Their two dates in Manchester on the 22nd and 23rd of March are testaments to this idea. And unlike last weekend’s equally inspirational classic 80s group who, unfortunately through no fault of their equally visionary guitarist that carves out your heart in a very different way, just didn’t quite indent their fingers into the soft nerve of what made the magic…well magic, when it was alchemised in their early, unparalleled albums. The Mary Chain live, is still very much an assault on the senses.
But now, all these years later, through breakups, and new albums (namely this month’s Glasgow Eyes, songs from which get aired tonight), they possess a greater appreciation of melody (Darklands and the eternally gorgeous torch-in-the-dark of Sometimes Always with Jane Weaver), the nuance in the noise (if Phil Spector was your drug dealer, the vicious, velvet kick of Some Candy Talking and Just Like Honey, also a duet with Weaver still pack as much unnerving, euphoric oomph as they did way back when). The importance of letting the riffs ring rather than reduce people’s spinal cords to pieces of burned toast (In A Hole, Head On), of taming the tornado rather than letting people be mangled and maimed by its splintered antlers (the oxymoronic pop gem of Happy When It Rains, the screeching balls of Blues from a Gun), in a way that professionals recognise is an essential feature of their increasing legacy, their undoubted influence on raucaus, ramshackle indie culture – to grow.
It would be pointless and pantomime if they stumbled onto the stage and started threatening the crowd armed with a broken beer bottle, eyes fizzing with amphetamine, Bonsai tree haircut, thinking they’re being filmed by Warhol. But witness how wonderfully the circle gradually reaches the destined terminus it always knew, one day it would.
They are, as they always were when they initially unleashed their Psychocandy and Darklands masterpieces (whilst not forgetting Automatic and Munki)- sonic iconoclasts that genuinely concerned critics and audiences alike to the extremes that the repercussions saw revolts across the country and riots were incited.
Riots and returned records aside- we witness still how they have progressed from 15-minute sets to sets that are over an hour and a half long with a cross-pollination of ages absorbing the tunes is a signifier of how time has tuned into what was genuinely a bomb waiting to be detonated, how the tides have turned in their favour, how the empire they helped built is no longer such an uncomfortable and exiled space but welcomes them with open arms.
New tunes jamcod and Chemical Animal from the new album Glasgow Eyes have a certain mystic, dynamism to them that works well – perhaps more so live than it does on their new album. The former is a scorching, scowling mid-tempo explosion of fuzz guitars and venomous vocals, a convergence of silence and lightning, quiet and dynamite, communion of candy-striped leather and blood. The latter is a blissful, broken overdose of cracked, climactic noises and magnetic atmospherics, the sonic departure from one room, and stepping into another whilst guided by a glimpse of light with dust particles dancing in its harsh, hallucinatory beam.
Non-album highlights Sidewalking packs as much swagger as it did when released as a standalone single in 1988, a cattleprod and cathode ray to the mid-brain, whilst tunes from 2019’s excellent comeback album, be it Amputation or All Things Must Pass – groan and explode in a way which doesn’t just tingle the teeth, but teases them out of the gums until they tumble out of one’s mouth – an indomitable swamp of swirling, psychedelic menace we are acolytes at the mercy of, falling to one’s death from a dreamscape balcony, as much sucking on sugar paper as stepping on shards of shattered glass, as much damage as joy.
After the encore- more blasts of white cloud and the band emerge as stickmen from the wings. Silhouettes that cut the same demonic shapes they always did when ripping themselves (and their stage/audience) to shreds of stringy mince meat. Pushed forward by the blinding industrial rhythm and predatory electronic groove, Reverence (from early 90s Honey’s Dead) takes no prisoners as it draws all to a close. Its desire for death- its depraved self-sacrificial calling on some psychic hitman to assassinate the man and turn him into a martyr is just as dark as it always was. Whipped by the wit’s frayed end, JFK/Jesus Christ/Jim Reid are bound together in same destitutional chant of torrid hypnotism and propulsive groove.
No wonder the Mary Chain hate rock ‘n’ roll. Hate it enough to love it.
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Jesus and Mary Chain Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
All words by Ryan Walker
Photos by Liam Maxwell, you can find him here – contact
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