LIVE: JESUS AND MARY CHAIN – Perth, 8 August 2024

LIVE: JESUS AND MARY CHAIN – Perth, 8 August 2024
The Astor Theatre, Perth
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
Photography by Damien Crocker

Scottish rockers Jesus And Mary Chain brought their gorgeous melodies and discordant guitars to Perth to close out their Australian tour, creating a hypnotic and transfixing wall of sound from opener JAMC-OD (not Jam Cod, for the record) from new album Glasgow Eyes.

With the stage drenched in red and white for Head On and Happy When It Rains you could almost forgive yourself for thinking this was a religious occasion, frontman Jim Reid preaching from the altar of rock n’ roll, his elder brother William providing unearthly, swirling riffs bordering at times on droning, dirge-like, Velvet Underground-referencing white noise, and the near-full house as mesmerised and moving as emotively as a Southern Gospel service.

When JAMC get really out there – Chemical Animal from Glasgow Eyes, for instance, the stage now drenched in green, with yellow spotlights resembling lasers cutting through the fake smoke – one wonders what someone might make of things if they were on the ‘right drugs’. With just a couple of beers under one’s belt the transcendence of the music allows one to float away, lost in the rapturous vibes. Perhaps, in 2024, the music IS the drug?

We’re treated to five songs from the new album – all perfectly standing next to their earlier material. There’s no joking around, no anecdotes – precious little talking at all. The music literally does the talking for them, and wonderful it is, the melodies and the noise working together in a special way – sometimes evoking darker echoes of The Beatles at their trippiest.

The quiet-loud-quiet title track to the Some Candy Talking EP is a crowd favourite, sublimely catchy and ridiculously never a hit single, before Jim’s girlfriend Rachel Conti takes the stage to duet on newie Girl 71. Borrowed bass player Simone Butler from Primal Scream takes the mic for Hope Sandoval’s vocal part on the classic, ethereal Sometimes Always.

Darklands and the warm vitriol of I Hate Rock N’ Roll close out the main set with huge roars over the intentional feedback, before a great encore mini-set starting with Just Like Honey (the song ranked #20 best song about oral sex by Time Out Magazine).

The short velvet punch of Taste Of Cindy is next, before the extended drone of Reverence and its nihilistic “I wanna die just like Jesus Christ, I wanna die like JFK” refrain.

Tonight’s show was, simply, amazing from start to finish, Jesus & Mary Chain’s performance so enthralling that this writer could almost forget the intense toothache pain which has plagued me for a couple of days. It’s certainly a long way from the days when JAMC would only play twenty or thirty minutes if they could get away with it, and a damn sight more enjoyable than eating Nurofen like candy.

[Editor’s note: Due to an unexpectedly early start to the show we unfortunately missed Merryn Jeann’s support slot, but here’s a gallery of photos anyway]

 

Setlist:

Jamcod
Head On
Happy When It Rains
All Things Pass
Chemical Animal
Blues From a Gun
Nine Million Rainy Days
In a Hole
Sidewalking
Venal Joy
Pure Poor
Some Candy Talking
Girl 71
Sometimes Always
Darklands
I Hate Rock ‘n’ Roll

Encore:
Just Like Honey
Taste of Cindy
Reverence

Category: Live Reviews, Photo Galleries