Under April Skies (in May)
IT’S hard not to experience a shiver of excitement at the thought of The Jesus and Mary Chain playing a festival in Murcia – for me at least.
It is fully 30 years since I last saw this band from Scotland – fronted by the brothers Jim and William Reid – in concert.
I presumed that – like many other groups from that period who produced a noisefest relying on feedback and reverberating guitars – that they had probably shuffled off to do something different with their lives.
Being in your 50s doesn’t generally lend itself to coaxing ear-wrenching sounds out of a musical instrument.
However, I was surprised when a friend told me he’d seen the brothers Reid at a festival in Barcelona a couple of years ago – and what’s more they weren’t there to supplement their pensions with a lethargic ‘give-us-your-money’ type performance.
They were actually nailing their songs and sounded very damned good.
The thought of seeing them again in such good form was just a whimsical notion until they announced last month that they would be playing at the Warm Up festival in Murcia in May.
That immediately set me thinking back to those heady days in 1989 when the Jesus and Mary Chain (J&MC) brought their indy noise pop to the Great Hall at the student union in Cardiff to belt out an hour and a half of melodious feedback – mixed in with slightly less tuneful stuff.
The J&MC started out life in the mid-1980s as firm favourites of Radio One’s John Peel.
Their swirling, industrial, guitar-scream singles such as ‘Never Understand’ and ‘Upside Down’ made them the darlings of the indy crowd.
They were bad boys too – at first just playing very short sets of a couple of songs before strutting off in cacophony of deafening feedback and leaving fans rather bemused and short-changed. For some they were pretentious, for others they were just bloody awesome.
A series of very good albums ‘Psychocandy (1985), Darklands (1987), Automatic (1989) saw them produce some of the best noise pop ever done.
They have a place in my top 10 favourite groups of all-time and those albums contain some of the finest indy songs ever produced (in my opinion) – dark, noisy, guitar-laden, driven, fast, powerful but also very melodious.
This is what the biography section on their website says about them. Bear in mind that it’s bound to be biased – but if they can’t talk themselves up, no one can.
The website tells us that ‘few bands have had such a huge effect on musical culture, as The Jesus and Mary Chain’.
“Their attitude alone, dressed in black, angry with the world, playing short sets drenched in feedback, set the bench mark in the post Sex Pistols music scene of London.
"Their seminal debut album Psychocandy would go on to change the course of popular music, channelling the sneering angst and noise distortion of the live shows into hypnotic sweet melodies layered with dark lyrics that would beguile and bewilder.”
To be fair, they are probably right, although they should probably qualify that by saying they had a huge effect on ‘a certain kind of musical culture’ – ie, guitardriven indy music.
“Released into the world, The Jesus and Mary Chain became the darlings of British press, as they searched to find the owner of the post punk crown in the mid 80s,” continues the bio.
“With strong Velvet Underground influences, and a despondent but melodic wall of noise, they went on to become the inspiration for such critically acclaimed bands such as My Bloody Valentine in the early 90s.”
We are told that they moved to London in the mid1980s and ‘were bought to the attention of Alan Mcgee and Creation records, by Bobby Gillespie, vocalist with another Scottish band, Primal Scream’.
“The first single Upside Down was released, and Gillespie joined the band as drummer. Gillespie pursued the Velvet Underground, single snare and floor tom sound that became prevalent on the recording of the Psychocandy album,” notes the bio.
“In stark contrast to the adrenaline-fuelled 15 minute live shows, that often ended in violence and riot, (as the Reid’s inflammatory interaction with the thrill-hungry crowd, saw them provoking utter chaos,) the slow throbbing noise pop Psychcocandy album, spawned such classics as Just Like Honey and Some Candy Talking.”
Just as a clarification here, not all the early gigs ended in riots, although there was one particular incident in the US that I remember which got Jim Reid into trouble.
It was surprising to me to read in the bio that they didn’t split up until the end of the 1990s.
They seemed to slip out of contention after releasing their brilliant ‘Rollercoaster’ EP in 1990. Rollercoaster, by the way, was a jingling, atmospheric wall of sound and I remember playing it over and over again, much to the annoyance of those around me.
After well documented fallings out, the brothers were reconciled musically in 2007 when they started to play live shows again together. However, new material didn’t arrive until 2017 with the album Damage and Joy, which I must confess to not having bought or heard.
The brothers Reid will be performing on the Friday night at the Warm Up festival on May 3 along with other luminaries such as Two Door Cinema Club.
For more information on the festival – which also sees Noel Gallagher and the brilliant Teenage Fanclub on Saturday – go to www.warmupfestival.es
Tickets are still available for both days under the ‘abonos’ section on the website.
The two-day passes are priced at €60 and €100 – day tickets are €30 for the Friday and €32 for the Saturday.