Review: The Jesus and Mary Chain, 12th March 2008, The Roundhouse, London
There are certain expectations when going to see a band with such a reputation as the Jesus and Mary Chain. Just like you might expect to see a penis when going to see Iggy Pop, or a vagina when you go to see Phil Collins, you could be forgiven for thinking you may be presented with a moody, sullen provocative performance from the Glaswegian rock legends. The Mary Chain, in their eighties heyday, were famed for the anger of their stage presence, frequently performing entire gigs with their backs to the audience, fighting with fans, inciting riots and generally living a punk dream after the event. The music, at first, sounding like the world’s worst hangover; leaden and fucked through a blistering fog of feedback. Some classic songs were lost beneath the waves, molested into growled obfuscation – and they sounded bewilderingly great! Nobody sounded like the Mary Chain, and very few bands could profess to have come close to sounding like them since. And let’s face it; who would want to hide their songs in such a maze of sound? Not when each song is so perfectly crafted and honed in respect of the marketing department. This is not the vocation of the brothers Reid. I have often sat listening to Psychocandy wondering what it must have been like to have been in the studio during playback. “This is a great song, man” says Bobbie Gillespie, “it reminds of the Stones, man, so melodic and cool at the same time.” The Reid brothers look across at each other with a look of horror on their faces and the song is quickly re-recorded with the feedback turned up so as to swamp the song completely. “Bobby,” says Jim, lighting a cigarette, head bowed slightly like he’s in a spaghetti western, “you wanna be in the Stones you’d better fuck off and form your own band.” And the rest is history.
You know when you’re going to see the Mary Chain that you are going to see the real deal. This band made no concessions to the industry, in-fighting is legendary and makes the Gallagher brothers look like toddlers in a sand pit crying over sticklebrick rights. They have been through rehab without a single Sun photographer getting a text message, and they have consistently released brilliant records that stand as albums, works of art, rather than the pillow cases of myriad singles. So it may have been a slight problem for a purist such as myself to see them reform. Jim Reid is tea-total, his brother, evidently not so, but seems on the stage to resemble more of a golem than a rabble-rouser.
I have never been an advocate of the reform – so many bands have pissed on their own legacy by doing so. But I have had the odd pleasant occasion when I have been revivified by the event; I think fondly of seeing a middle aged Television in Bloomsbury a couple of years ago encoring with a screeching rendition of the Sonic’s garage classic, Psychotic Reaction. (Some genius never fades. We salute you Tom Verlaine!) But others have annoyed me, disappointed me, undermined my advocacy. The resurrection of the likes of the Sex Pistols makes me think of Graham Greene when he said, “I was never a rebel when young, for fear of becoming a conservative when old.” But you have to take each band on their merits, as you had to do originally, and I have no issue seeing Jim Reid resemble a geography teacher delivering announcements at a school assembly. Perhaps that sounds unfair, but with his closely trimmed hair and dour stage persona, Reid the younger commands your attention. Reid the older, stood stage left, looks more like security until you realise he is doing some guitar work (the dog’s body strumming is nowadays carried out by a second guitarist). They are not there to get a rise out of us tonight, that much is clear early on, and this seems to get a rise out of some audience members. It says something about society when people who saw the Mary Chain in the eighties are now mothers and fathers and geography teachers themselves, but still want to riot. Something is missing.
Instead we get a steady and professional performance with many musical highlights if very few scars. Much of the crowd is young, which is good to see intelligence in the musical youth, and much of it is attentive. Each wild surge forward of the throng is met with starched blankness by Jim Reid, he is here to sing the music tonight, his scars are within and not for display. There is no threat (or promise) at any point of a punch up or a “fuck off!” and it has an odd effect. This band of chaos angels have unsaddled their horses and are allowing the music to strut its stuff for maybe the first time. The ballads are triumphs, and the rock songs are doing now what the band members used to do; standing threateningly around you threateningly. Sidewalking, Taste of Cindy and Reverence are sturdy delights in addition to the obvious classics. The thunder of Cracking Up, my personal favourite, means I can no longer hope to offer an impartial view of the gig.
The Mary Chain are different nowadays, they are perhaps matured, battle-scarred (if that isn’t the same thing) and although they will have their detractors for the reform, they have made people discuss them again. And the only final sentence in that discussion is that they are just as significant now as they ever were.