The Jesus and Mary Chain @ UEA

Jim and William Reid aka Jesus and Mary Chain are such fucking cool guys. They are PROPER musicians. They look like they hate everyone and would rather be anywhere other than here, tonight. That's what you want from your live band, am I right? Jim explains, in a weird kind of "This is the lesson for today" introduction, that they'll play some hits, have a 5 minute sit down and then come back on stage to play all the way through Psychocandy, their very first album which came out 30 years ago. They play all the best ones (except for Cracking Up which I sorely missed). Reverence was a sea of white mist and a wall of noise. Some Candy Talking is sweet as a button. There's masses of smoke machine, and masses of reverb and feedback and it's just really really loud and brilliant and extreme. I LOVED it. Jim, the singer, stands virtually motionless and expressionless throughout the gig, in the midst of the crazy noise, whilst William, his brother, lurks about behind him. The crowd are perfectly happy to just be there; there's the start of a pit but it doesn't go anywhere, and there's quite a bit of toe tapping. Towards the middle to the end of the night, Jim's vocals seem to get lost in the mix; I'm not sure if he's run out of energy, or whether the instruments are too loud, but the audience seem to get a little bored and restless as the connection with the lead singer is gradually lost. Still, overall, a fucking brilliant classic gig from a fucking brilliant classic band. Nice one.

8/10