When the highlight of a night is not encountering Black Tower vin rouge in a bar for the first time in several millennia, you know you’re onto a winner. In fact, we should probably head to straight to the other, scribbled, opener: “Ahhh, now that’s how to do it”. The Jesus and Mary Chain are immense tonight. Primal, at times brutal, but always with an ear for melody and beauty. There are other bands with the same, or more, power. There are other songwriters with a gift for the most perfect of notes. However, few, if any, can marry them together with such ease as the brothers Reid and their three compadres tonight.
Against a basic red, white and black Psychocandy backdrop, the band are an interestingly static five-piece. Not ones for hyperbole or being overly demonstrative despite the scale of the noise flattening the venue at times. Jim Reid has a snarling but matured charisma up front whilst guitarist William lurks stage-right in the shadows. Still with the trademark mop of dark hair, his, at times, intimidating playing melds with the drawled vocals. Drummer Brian Young, ex of Fountains of Wayne, gives it some too. Tight throughout and notably thunderous on the tribal-sounding ‘Cracking Up’.
All this occurs underneath the ABC’s glitter ball of biblical proportions. Although not spinning tonight, there’s something perfect about its presence. Over a sometimes tumultuous career, the East Kilbride-born band have always had the ability to touch the stars. Listening to some of the pop-kissed tunes and vocals, it’s no great stretch to imagine them writing for the latest chart-bunny. A torch-song, admittedly, but that Phil Spector-type vibe is there. Wherever that talent for writing a hook comes from, it clearly stopped for a fag when the band formed way back when.
‘Blues From a Gun’ is particularly monstrous tonight. Basic and garage-like but brutal and flat…in a good way. In the sense that the sound is uncompromising and seemingly not concerned with anything other than itself. The frothing crowd lap it up and it’s pretty hard to imagine a better take. Whatever the stop-start nature of their trips through music, the Reid brothers and their current line-up are tight as hell. This isn’t any, later-career, crappy reunion. There’s no hint of age in the sound. And yet no hint of parody or clinging on to lost youth either. Quite a feat.
To paraphrase some beatnik quote of yore: “If a strange man pulls up in a black limo, opens the door and holds out two tickets for the Mary Chain… get in the car. Go”.
A night of surly magnificence.