September 25, 2012

Show review: The Jesus and Mary Chain at Paradise Rock Club – 9/11

The Jesus and Mary Chain, notoriously short-tempered Scottish noise-pop pioneers, are in the midst of a reunion tour which brought them to the Paradise for two consecutive nights earlier this month. The Vandelles and The Psychic Paramount opened.

The Jesus and Mary Chain of today is far removed from the band’s volatile formative years. Shows in the early 80s were brief, substance-fueled and commonly ended with some sort of violent outburst by the band or the crowd. Their contentious attitudes didn’t stop brothers Jim and William Reid from crafting one of the decade’s best albums and paving the way for a million noise-worshipping rock bands to come, however. Psychocandy is an indisputably brilliant haze of melody, attitude and piercing squall that would be massively influential to a generation of bands to follow. It was among the first records to employ feedback as a musical element rather than a hindrance – a concept that bands like Sonic Youth would later seize and run with.

After an acrimonious breakup in 1999, fans likely didn’t expect to see the brothers Reid on stage together again. The siblings are the Chain’s songwriters and only constant members, and their combative relationship is no great secret. The infighting reached a boiling point following their final tour, and it wasn’t until 2007 that another Jesus and Mary Chain performance would take place. Cue five more years of near-dormancy. But here we are in 2012, and the band has embarked on a club tour to once again revisit their classic tunes. Nostalgia doesn’t exactly gel with the nihilistic attitude once projected by the Reids, but wherever their motivations lie, they can still put on a show befitting of the band’s very loud legacy.

That legacy was plenty evident in the sugary, surf-y noise-pop of opening act The Vandelles. Flanked by a floor-switch-triggered lighting rig, the trio delivered energetic rock with a straight from the garage feel. A no-frills rhythm section backed riff- and reverb-heavy guitar, which employed miniature noise freakouts between verses. The band also seemed more excited for the headliners than much of the audience.

The Psychic Paramount took a significantly different approach to a trio format, pummeling the audience with relentless psych-noise jams in almost total darkness. In terms of composition, the set didn’t differ a whole lot from their performance at the Pitchfork Music Festival, which I wrote about back in July. The songs are still lengthy, loud excursions into krautrock rhythms and swirling guitar chaos. Their aesthetic certainly functions better in the dark of a club than the bright midday sunshine though. The set was a disorienting and head-spinning trip in the best possible way.

Today’s incarnation of The Jesus and Mary Chain, featuring bassist Phil King of Lush and drummer Brian Young of Fountains of Wayne, took the stage once the Paramount had wrapped up. The folly of any audience member bereft of earplugs was evident from the first note. If anyone had assumed the Chain’s sound might have mellowed with age, they would be wrong. William Reid and John Moore’s amplifiers spat forth as much distorted, feedback-drenched squall as the two guitarists could possibly muster. King’s bass and Young’s drums brought a semblance of order to the songs while Jim Reid intoned lyrics alternately snide and lustful with apathetic remove. Although the lineup has been in a near-constant state of flux throughout the band’s history, their sound has never veered far from the ear-piercing haze they pioneered with Psychocandy.

That’s not to say they didn’t evolve along the way though. The night’s career-spanning setlist emphasized the more nuanced songwriting of Automatic and Honey’s Dead in addition to that debut record’s classic tracks. “Blues from a Gun,” the ever-brilliant “Just Like Honey” and the gleefully provocative “Reverence” proved highlights, but the sonic assault befalling the audience at any given moment was never anything short of joyous. The set wasn’t free of snags – false starts, forgotten lyrics, evident inter-Reid tension – but it wouldn’t really be a Jesus and Mary Chain show if things went right 100 percent of the time. Accusations of a cash-grab and the Reids not having their hearts in it run rampant as this tour progresses, but the band does justice to their songs. The euphorically abrasive haze still sounds amazing at dangerously high volumes. I braved the encore without earplugs, and it was a decision that even half a day of tinnitus couldn’t make me regret.