“We’re going to play one short set”. Uh oh. Hopefully Jim Reid’s helpful timetabling of the night won’t spark a riot, as the East Kilbride brothers’ curtailed London ICA show in 1984 did.
But it’s ok. The lads, and their audience have mellowed now. It is 30 years on from that event, after all, and more importantly, 30 years since the release of debut long-player ‘Psychocandy’.
To the first part of tonight’s show, then. Epic by the standard set in the ’80s, the band launch into ‘April Skies’ and it’s obvious that we’re getting The Hits – the tunes perhaps incidental to tonight’s theme, but crucial to the career of the Reids.
The opener, after all was a #8 hit, besting anything from their early, or later, career.
Then onto ‘Head On’, this blistering live take on the ‘Automatic’ album track almost as great as the Pixies version (yes, that good), and we’re spirited into full Velvets mode for ‘Psychocandy’ (the track, not the album – not yet). Blinding strobes herald ‘Some Candy Talking’ as we struggle to pick out William, skulking at the back, whipping up a maelstrom of noise for ‘Reverence’, while his younger sibling prowls the stage menacingly. A tumultuous, feedback-riven ‘Upside Down’ closes this enthralling appetiser – and for a band who arguably cut their finest moment on that debut single it’s perhaps apt that they indeed peak very early tonight.
You know the score for the main event. ‘Psychocandy’ has always sounded like an album conceived in haste, the Mary Chain’s knack for brevity meaning 15 songs were required, and let’s face it, a dozen tunes to match ‘Upside Down’ was always a bit of a tall order. Happily the collection is punchier than on record and even ‘The Living End’ and ‘Taste The Floor’ make sense in a live context, even if they paved the way for plodding copyists like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. In fact, the jigsaw somehow comes together – with the band still managed by Creation mentor Alan Mcgee, even tonight’s support, Pete MacLeod – an earnest Lanarkshire singer-songwriter – would fit in quite nicely supporting whatever abomination either of the Gallagher brothers is peddling at the moment. However, MacLeod isn’t quite what you might expect for the “new Sex Pistols”, as the tabloids dubbed them at the time.
That was then, however, and this is, well, then too, in case anyone forgot why we were here. To celebrate this frankly terrifying anniversary, and to worship at the temple of the Reids. The band that spawned a thousand fringes – many sadly diminished by age – and laid down the modern blueprint for feuding brothers in rock. A lot to answer for.
The beauty of pioneering distorted noise-rock – ok, in the wake of Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine – ok, and the Velvets as well – is that the peaks and roughs in the songwriting are pretty much ironed out by the sheer wall of noise emanating from the stage (ok, add Phil Spector to that list). Stripped back, as on ‘Cut Dead’, and it’s basically Buddy Holly with cooler hair.
As with any ‘album’ show, the forced order of the setlist makes for a bumpy ride. ‘Never Understand’ is the high water mark, while a thrillingly deafening ‘You Trip Me Up’ sees the stage engulfed in dry ice, as we approach the anti-climax of closer ‘It’s So Hard’. Still, that opening “short set” would be a hard act to follow. Whether in 1985 or 2015.