For a band famed and often celebrated for their seeming lack of commercial acumen (and general ability to fuck things up, as they themselves would admit) the stars seem to have aligned pretty well for the great Jesus & Mary Chain comeback of 2017.
Shoegaze, a much-maligned genre to which the Reid brothers are at least partially credited/blamed for having invented seems somewhat back in vogue, with the likes of The Moonlandingz clearly proud to wear their influences on their sleeves, whilst the 2014 Psychocandy nostalgia tour where the band played their seminal debut album in full from start to finish reignited many lost passions, also winning new fans in the process. *
With this release timed to coincide with a homecoming headline slot at a certain BBC-endorsed Scottish music festival and with fresh conversations around independence and Brexit adding extra spice to Anglo-Scottish relations, now could not be a better time for the return of the original Alan McGee/Creation-endorsed warring brothers and their notably tetchy outlook on life.
So we have Damage & Joy, an album preceded by early releases Amputation and Always Sad, both of which were well received and gained generous coverage and airplay. With this in mind, what's the album actually like?
When assessing TJ&MC (as I'm not sure they have ever been called, but I'm looking to start something new here) the main thing to remember is that with the odd exception of relatively straight forward chugging rockers such as 'April Skies', their best songs essentially follow two formats; scuzzy, feedback-drenched exercises in guitar noisery (think a less extreme version of peers My Bloody Valentine); and Phil Spector/Velvet Underground-indebted 'ballads', slower-paced tracks that recall 60s girl groups, wall of sound acoustics and Warhol-era New York. Indeed, their real moments of magic such as 'Just Like Honey' manage to combine the two, like Lou Reed and John Cale taking a buzzsaw to an amp.
On 'Damage & Joy', 'Amputation' follows the former, with its motorik groove and eerie backing vocals – more of which we hear later – whilst the boy-girl duet 'Always Sad' is one of the highlights of 2017 so far, nailing the 3-minute power pop their heroes The Velvets and The Ramones always managed to perfect so nonchalantly, sounding both meaningful and casually disaffected at the same time. So far so good.
'War & Peace' is another track that follows the slow-burning route, a funereal pace building to the sort of crescendo that you can picture soundtracking an edgy Netflix drama; 'All Things Must Pass' starts with a series of bleeps and glitches before introducing a riff that sounds very 90s, with the slightest reminiscence of pastiche rock (think 'Bohemian Like You' by The Dandy Warhols). It is not the last time this happens on the record.
‘Song For A Secret’, ‘The Two Of Us’ and closer 'Stop The Rock' continue to successfully share the heavy lifting for a fairer gender split (Bernadette Denning and Isobel Campbell respectively) with 'Black & Blues' employing guest vocalist flavour of the month Sky Ferreira, following her turns on last year's Primal Scream and DIIV albums. 'Simian Split' is perhaps the most interesting thing sonically on here, with bleepy electronics and a slightly creepy fairground vibe.
Ultimately it must be said that few of the lyrics stand up to close scrutiny, with girls tasting of coffee, puns around Roman noses/dim sum and obligatory references to both getting high and "the rain" (well they are Scottish after all). Perhaps the most unfortunate example of this is 'Los Feliz - Blues & Greens', with its sarcastic 'political message' of "God bless America" not adding up to a whole lot. There are plenty of other examples of what the less charitable might describe as '6th form poetry'.
Of course, like any band of men in their mid-late 50s with a stellar back catalogue behind them, there are limitations to what you can and should expect from a comeback, and many will likely view this as more a continuation from 1998's 'Munki' than any bold new step forward. Indeed, reports that some of the tracks have supposedly been knocking around for some time add to the sense of Damage & Joy being more a collection of songs than a coherent album in the traditional sense.
Overall though this should be viewed as a welcome return for a band whose absence has made the heart grow fonder, and whose influence is perhaps wider than previously given credit for (nowhere more evident than on film soundtracks such as Lost In Translation and the work of Kevin Shields/David Holmes). It is good to have them back.
