In the first of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s two-show stint in Melbourne, there’s a moment early on that sits apart from everything else for its sheer authenticity. Frontman Jim Reid is angry and, for the briefest moment, it looks as though he’s going to lash out.
His ire, it soon becomes apparent, is directed at those mixing the sound at the centre of the room – and so Reid promptly orders his band (his guitarist brother William and three ring-ins who adhere pleasingly to the rule of successful football umpiring by not being particularly noticed) to stop. This, right as they’re starting to gather some steam on Just Like Honey – the timeless, gorgeous first track off their debut album, Psychocandy, which defined the band’s sound and whose enduring, 30-year-old legacy we’re here to commemorate.
And that’s the unfortunate thing with these anniversary shows: they always run the risk of resembling a mobile museum exhibit more than a rock show. Any ageing band is doing well to avoid that fate, especially one whose abrasive stage act was once described as “art as terrorism”. But tonight they’re mostly preaching to the choir – you can’t imagine any non-fan forking out $90 for a show where the roadies are almost indistinguishable from the band members.
Approaching this gig, there was a compelling temptation for the reviewer to revisit Creation Stories, the 2013 memoir of the Mary Chain’s first, short-lived manager, the Creation Records boss, Alan McGee – if only to revel once more in the aura that surrounded their live shows in those shambling early years. In 1984 McGee signed then band on first sight, turned on by their spiky attitude and the walls of white noise that artfully obscured their Phil Spector-style pop gems. At that point, McGee recalled, Jim Reid “wasn’t as temperamentally miserable as William but he must have felt he had to be out of family duty”. These were “totally depressing people”, thought their boss. “If they won the lottery it would put them in a bad mood.”
Their time under the guidance of such a master myth-maker as McGee served both parties well, cementing the reputation of the Jesus and Mary Chain as musical outlaws – the type of band who’d shower the room with feedback for 15 minutes, and then get bottled off stage or else incite a riot. The Reid brothers are now a long way removed from that time and its ideals. Really, you’d worry for their health if they weren’t. They’re men in their mid-50s and so are at least half the audience tonight; if the Jesus and Mary Chain’s core constituency were to attempt a riot now, it would require defibrillators, not stitches.
And that’s all fine because if you park the cynicism and snark at the door, shows like this one are just as much a celebration of the lifelong fan as they are a superannuation top-up for the artist. Would anyone in the room really enjoy this more if it were put to them under some other, probably dishonest conceit; that this band have something fresh and vital left in the tank? Something more real than the dozens of classic songs the fans already love? No, they’re here to tell Jim and William Reid that the decades-old album they’re working over with something close to artistic sincerity has not been mere background music to their lives, but an important work of art that really knocked them sideways.
And it does still matter. Just Like Honey drips with the same lush charm as ever, and The Living End still crashes through the night like a howitzer – providing both the album and this part of the night an irresistible one-two punch. Taste the Floor sounds a fraction slower and thus ominous and more sinister, stomping away with menace. William Reid’s guitar remains monumental no matter what the song. And loud, of course.
The rest? Going slightly against the grain of the anniversary show genre, the Reids warm up for the album-long stretch with an assortment of other material (perhaps a flippant way to appraise the baggy, swaggering seven-song mini-set at the start), rather than shoe-horning it all in at the end. This works well in a few respects, not least in providing a finale that serves as the one other authentically Jesus and Mary Chain experience of the night: no encore.
