Photo: Steve Gullick
The Jesus And Mary will release new album Damage and Joy on March 24 - their first since 1998's Munki.
The band, who rose to fame with a series of short explosive gigs in the mid '80s, are regarded as one of Britain's greatest bands of all time, and also are another testimony to Alan McGee's genius A&R skills as he signed them in 1984, following a tip-off from Bobby Gillespie. He managed them up until 1986 giving them their first break.
McGee's love for the band, who are fronted by brothers Jim and William Reid, remains strong. The Scot signed them to Creation management in 2014 - at which point they were seven years into their reunion, and had been intermittently playing live. Most notable was their comabck show at Coachella in 2007.
But since McGee's been managing them again he's helped kick start a new chapter in the JAMC story. Their most significant activity - until the news about the album - was the tour in 2015 in honour of their incredible album Psychocandy.
Damage and Joy recording began September 2015 and it's been worked on with producer Youth, who also has just finished a record with Shaun Ryder's Black Grape.
“We started to – can you believe? – listen to each other a bit more,” explains Jim. “In the last couple of years, we’ve buried the hatchet to some degree, and thankfully not into each other. Most people who know us would say that we haven’t mellowed that much. I think it was to do with the fact, dare I say it, that wisdom comes with age. Let’s live and let live, and let’s take each other’s opinions into account.”
The band first split in 1999, with Reid declaring in an interview with The Independent: "After each tour we wanted to kill each other, and after the final tour we tried". This sounds a lot more feral than the Gallagher brothers situation.
The new track 'Amputation, which premiered on the Steve Lamacq show on BBC 6 Music last night, addresses "being edited out of the whole music business… I felt like a rock ‘n’ roll amputation.”
“The interesting thing about this record is what comes out of the speakers,” declares Jim Reid. “To make a good record is an achievement if you’re twenty-two, but to do it in your fifties, the way we are, I think is a minor miracle.” The album was produced by Youth who Shaun Ryder's Black Grape also have just finished recording an album with out in Spain.
The full albaum tracklisting is:
1. Amputation
2. War On Peace
3. All Things Pass
4. Always Sad
5. Song For A Secret
6. The Two Of Us
7. Los Feliz (Blues and Greens)
8. Mood Rider
9. Presidici (Et Chapaquiditch)
10. Get On Home
11. Facing Up To The Facts
12. Simian Split
13. Black And Blues
14. Can’t Stop The Rock
