The Jesus and Mary Chain return to the stage in Japan tonight, almost 30 years since they first visited the country.
Idiosyncratic and influential, the Scottish band, led by brothers Jim and William Reid, are in the process of recording a new album.
They return to Japan to recreate the raw feedback white noise, wispy vocals and power pop chords of their seminal debut album Psychocandy.
Psychocandy is best described as a collection of intertwined pop melodies over a mix of guitar reverb and pounding drums. It became the band’s calling card, their signature sound.
The Mary Chain toured the album in the UK last year to mark the 30th anniversary of its release, rekindling a relationship with live audiences and seemingly revitalising the creative juices of the reformed angry young men.
Earlier in the Mary Chain’s career, many of the tracks from Psychocandy were not in their live set. It was last year’s anniversary shows that presented the opportunity to craft a coherent performance from a fairly anarchic album.
Now the band and the album reconnect with their Japanese fans.
Tonight The Jesus and Mary Chain play Psychocandy in its entirety at Umeda Akaso in Osaka.
Tomorrow there is a show at Ex Theater Roppongi Toyosu Pit in Tokyo.
Fun fact: The Mary Chain are an East Kilbride band, not a Glasgow band – although they did get signed through the intervention of Mount Florida’s Bobby Gillespie (now of Primal Scream) who started off as the band’s drummer.
Lead singer Jim Reid explained to the Japan Times:
“We weren’t even in Glasgow; we were in East Kilbride,” Jim Reid says, slowing down his speech to emphasize the geographic and cultural separation. “We were struggling to get anyone to pay attention to what we were doing, and through a series of, like, sort of, accidents, basically, Bobby got to hear a tape of ours, and he called us up.”
“To find like-minded people back then was just an absolute rarity,” Reid says. “(Gillespie) had a friend, Alan McGee, who was starting a record label in London. He hooked us up with Alan, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Their new record is reported to be around half way finished.
The opening track from Psychocandy, Just Like Honey, famously featured in the closing scene to Sophia Coppola’s film Lost in Translation, which was set in Japan.