(Photo by Michelle Vincent)
It took about a minute into The Jesus & Mary Chain’s set last night at the Olympia Theater for the legendary venue’s opulent, filigreed interiors to disappear. Atmospheric lights placed near the amps sliced through the smoke that puffed periodically from a machine just off stage left, and the band remained blanketed in half-darkness for the show’s entirety. This wasn’t a dignified concert in an historic opera house; it was a rock show in a dim dive in an underground club in New York or London or Glasgow circa 1985.
Which is appropriate, considering the Scottish quintet visited Miami—the only Southern U.S. date on the tour, by the way—to celebrate its seminal 1985 debut “Psychocandy,” a fuzzy, feedback-drenched alt-rock landmark whose influence is incalculable. When founding members Jim and William Reid toured “Psychocandy” 30 years ago, they turned their backs to the audience, Velvet Underground-style, leading to short sets, disgruntled audience members, thrown bottles and mini-riots. Now in their ‘50s, they recognize that it’s all about the music: They played expertly—and facing toward us—capturing all the discordant nuance and eardrum-busting fire of “Pyschocandy,” to the appreciation of a largely older, dancy crowd unburdened by hipster affect.
Before getting into “Psychocandy,” however, the group played a sample of seven tracks from later albums and earlier singles; by the second song, the megahit “Head On,” the audience was on its feet and spilling into the aisles, most of us remaining that way for the rest of the show. Having been disappointed by the Olympia Theater’s acoustics during Neutral Milk Hotel this past May, I was worried that J&MC’s noisy aesthetic wouldn’t work in this building. But all concerns melted away pretty quickly: The sound mix possessed all of the honeyed texture, metal-on-metal clangor, and partially buried vocals of J&MC’s recorded music, only with a more tactile urgency. The players performed with workmanlike cohesion, sounding album-perfect.
While the later-period tunes like “Reverence” and “Blues From a Gun” certainly had proponents in the audience, their chunky, commercial, ‘90s-Brit-rock attitude belied the youthful, paradigm-shattering humility of “Psychocandy.” Closing the early set, “Upside Down”—the 1984 Beach Boys-in-a-blender-style noise-pop—functioned as an ideal bridge into “Psychocandy.”
The group played the record straight through, in order, beginning with its biggest hit “Just Like Honey,” a song that, even in a live setting, is forever associated with Scarlett Johansson’s honey-dripping beehive. Standing in front of a “Psychocandy” banner depicting a blurry silhouette of his younger self, Jim Reid was clearly still jazzed by these songs after 30 years. They had the freshness of songs newly rediscovered, because in many cases, they were—half the album, or more, consists of songs that haven’t been played life since the group’s 2007 reformation.
“Never Understand” was arguably the evening’s top highlight, an anthemic show-stopper wisely divided into two songs by about 20 seconds of anticipatory silence. The final four songs—“My Little Underground,” “You Trip Me Up,” “Something’s Wrong” and “It’s So Hard”—constituted a collective scorcher, a sonic blast furnace of heavenly cacophony. The audience grew as unhinged as the Olympia would allow, which wasn’t much; a crowd-surfer, maybe the first I’ve seen in a theater concert, made it partially to the stage during “My Little Underground.” It looked like security promptly “escorted” the poor dude out of the building, which was so un-rock-‘n’-roll of them.
By the time “It’s So Hard” reached its epic heights, the sound was pure, symphonic noise squall, the vocals all but obliterated, and it didn’t matter. This album hasn’t aged a day, and it sounds even stronger and more prescient live. It’s worth the deafness.
SET LIST:
1. April Skies
2. Head On
3. Blues From a Gun
4. Some Candy Talking
5. Nine Million Rainy Days
6. Reverence
7. Upside Down
8. Just Like Honey
9. The Living End
10. Taste the Floor
11. Cut Dead
12. In a Hole
13. Taste of Cindy
14. Never Understand
15. Inside Me
16. Sowing Seeds
17. My Little Underground
18. You Trip Me Up
19. Something’s Wrong
20. It’s So Hard
