Jesus And Mary Chain

 

Opening tonight are Ciel. Which sounds a bit Dutch but they confess to being based in Brighton although their three members come from the UK, Spain and the Netherlands. Maybe that explains it. 

They are pleasant enough, dream poppy over some nicely thumping drums, hints of early Lush and a dashing of shoegaze. They go down well with what is quite a small crowd but then it’s still early.

The last time I saw the Jesus and Mary Chain was in 1987. Yes, that long ago. So a revisit was clearly long overdue. In 1987 they were promoting their second album ‘Darklands’ and although it wasn’t a wildly long set they had got past their early phase of playing with their backs to the audience, drenching their sound in feedback and everything else in dry ice before leaving the stage after about twenty minutes.

Tonight, they are (much) older, wise and totally professional although still men of very few words but brilliant with it. One of them still has hair (and some!) while the dry ice is also still there although they don’t layer it on in spades.

Brothers Jim and William Reid are joined these days by the well-travelled drummer Justin Welch, who started in Suede where he met Justine Frischmann with whom he formed Elastic. He was then the replacement drummer for the sadly departed Chris Acland in Lush when they reformed. Now he's here. 

In theory they are promoting their latest and eighth album ‘Glasgow Eyes’ but this is mostly a greatest hits set. 

Like likes of ‘April Skies’ and ‘Happy When It Rains’ come early, ‘Some Candy Talking’ a little later and then just when they were perhaps losing some of the crowd in the middle, due to some less familiar tracks, a cracking ‘Head On’ gets everyone’s attention back. 

Towards the end of the set Ciel's Michelle Hindricks joins them on stage to duet with Jim on ‘Sometimes Always’ which was originally done with Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval. Then they’re into the wonderful ‘Darklands’ before ‘Never Understand’ finishes the set. 

Michelle Hindricks is back on stage to add her voice to ‘Just Like Honey’ at the start of the encore before ‘Taste of Cindy’ and the sprawling monster that is ‘Reverence’ closes the night. 

I think I best not leave it so long next time.