I don’t know whether it’s a coincidence or not, but it looks like the Jesus and Mary Chain’s desire to match the Velvet Undergound biography is continuing. It begins with their music that, undeniably, tried and succeeded on transposing the ideas of Reed and Cale from the 60’s Warholean New York to the 80’s Scottish landscapes. But the parallel goes further than that. Similar to the VU, the JAMC also made two fantastic albums, which went practically ignored by the public yet defined a sound that was the influence for many other bands since. From the Sonic Youth to the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, their credits are countless.
Their musical recipe has got the simplicity of genius. Guitar noise and perfect pop songs are dosed in unbalanced ratios from song to song. Whilst Psychocandy contains music-scapes of feedback and walls of distortion that overlap to create beautiful songs, Darklands preserves that mysterious tension although emphasizing the melodies and the singing. This year JAMC reunited somewhere around their 25th anniversary and completed their VU mimesis.
So leaving VU to history and moving to JAMC news. This Brixton show, the second in London following the all-seated Royal Festival Hall gig as part of Jarvis Cocker’s Meltdown festival, was eagerly anticipated. The Academy is a rock venue that fits their proto-indie-guitar music much better than the jazzy RFH.
After a quite energetic, noisy, screamy and more efficacious than usual set by the Horrors, for the joy of the few teenagers and the skepticism of the elders, followed by the “as usual” monotonous set by Evan Dando… Baby, we know you’re bored but trying to bore us as well is not the solution… the headliners arrive.
The Brothers Reid enter the stage showing that brotherhood is not only a genetic issue. While Jim is perfectly fit and is here to demonstrate that the research claiming rockers have shorter life is basically wrong, Williams looks much less fit and is a little more rotund. His frizzy hair a caricature of his cool 80’s haircut. But, despite their look, I’m here for the music. And that music is alive and unperturbed by the years. Always following their successful recipe, this time they’ve dosed the set with a large proportion of beautiful songs and a minor amount of strident feedback.
The 20 song set contains 13 of the “21 singles” the band released and leaving out the less interesting of them. After an hour set, a homage to Syd Barrett with his Vegetable Man introduced the Psychocandy end of the set with the immortal Just like Honey and the beautiful You Trip Me Up. It’s the best moment for the enthusiastic and thrilled audience, which was still singing when the band quickly came back for an encore dedicated to their second album. Starting with the atmospheric Darklands and followed by the lovely Nine Million Rainy Days (Scottish humour!). Both songs, not previously played as part of their reunion, sang by “fit Jim” who took all the vocal duties for the night. The concert closed class(icall)y with Reverence.
Oh, a last note. Among the hit fuelled set JAMC played a new single All Things Must Pass. Solitary as it was it didn’t spoil the stream of music, but as a signal that an entire new album might be on the way, it’s a bit worrying. Please, can someone remind them that it was the Eagles and not the Velvet Underground that released a new album after their reunion tour…
Links
Jesus and Mary Chain [official site] [myspace]
Photos [valerio berdini]
