Photo: Michael Lee Jamison
The casual way a sharply dressed Jim Reid strolls on stage and says, “You alright? We’re going to play you some of our songs”, feels galaxies apart from the drug-fuelled years performing dosed on amphetamines, refusing to speak to the crowd, and leaving guitars out of tune.
Yet somehow, out of this riotous mayhem seeped 1985’s Psychocandy, an album the band freely recognise as “our little miracle”. Tonight is a celebration of the record, with a splattering of other classics thrown in.
Launching straight into ‘April Skies’ is a sharp, but clever shock. An immediate benchmark reminder of the Scots shoegaze fuelled, noise-pop sound, it makes clear that yes, Jim still has the voice, and brother William on guitar both the sound and the hair (even if the latter is a little grayer). Jesus was always meant to have a second coming, but no one promised it would be this good.
‘Blues From A Gun’ takes things down a darker rabbit hole, raspily admitting “dreams of escape keep me awake / looks like you're never gonna make it off the government list”. A prophetic lyric for this post Snowden age. Doused in messianic green light, Jim holds his hand up in appreciation at the cheers.
In the lead up to this anniversary tour, the band stated it was “now or never” to pay homage to their work, and the sobered sense of professionalism runs deep tonight, with Jim restarting ‘Cracking Up’ in search of perfection. Its drumbeat and bassline echoes Joy Division’s ‘She’s Lost Control’, a band he once bluntly called “shit”, building frantic momentum - Jim snarling at his critics, almost losing his cool as he throws the mic stand down in defiance.
The abrasive tone continues in a second half leaning more heavily toward Psychocandy – ‘The Living End’ hitting hard. And the eventual final flurry sees the genre defining ‘Some Candy Talking’ freed, somehow even more intense live than on record, inducing older heads to submit to the moshpit alongside younger faces not even born at the time of the track’s release.
But tonight is not just about one song, or indeed one album. It is about a band remembering itself and cementing legacy. Time may have passed, but the sound hasn’t dimmed. As Jim ravages through 1992’s 'Reverence', screaming, “I wanna die like JFK, I wanna die like Jesus Christ”, the declaration makes perverse sense. Who’d be afraid of death when you can come back like this?
