The Jesus and Mary Chain Stay True to Their Roots on Glasgow Eyes

The Jesus and Mary Chain—fathers of Scottish gloom-rock—have followed up their stellar 2017 album, Damage and Joy, with a return to form on Glasgow Eyes. The inimitable sound of Jim and William Reid has influenced countless bands over the 40 years they’ve been touring and recording—capturing the hearts of peers like the Stone Roses, Primal Scream, Swervedriver, my bloody valentine and Ride. Since the early 1980s, the Reid brothers have remained the only consistent members of the group. But multiple changes to the lineup (including Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie on drums in the mid-‘80s), and switching record labels over the last four decades (WEA, Sub Pop, Creation and now Fuzz Club) have done nothing to transform their signature sound. Their magic is wielded at every level; they self-produced Glasgow Eyes and, rather than rely on session musicians, played every instrument. The album—their eighth overall—finds Jim and William conjuring up wicked, writhing, guitar-driven goth rock that’s full of grizzly, distorted guitar-driven shoegaze and snarly, industrial clangers.

Eight albums in 40 years is a tame output, largely explained by the band’s explosive breakup in 1999 following a shambolic, drunken stage fail and the Reid brother’s refusal to carry on together. A Coachella reunion in 2007 led to a bunch of singles, greatest hits and compilations, and eventually Damage and Joy. Like their last album, Glasgow Eyes was recorded at Glasgow studio Mogwai’s Castle of Doom. Opening track “Venal Joy” tears into a distorted, wonky blast of synths and guitar feedback before settling into a fuzzy jam. “My venal heart is filled with pain / I’m okay, I’m alright, well okay, I’m alright,” Jim repeats with increasing uncertainty. The pluckier “American Born” then immediately welcomes girl group-style harmonies and a Ziggy Stardust-style “American Born” chorus that echoes—knowingly—David Bowie’s 1997 anthem “I’m Afraid of Americans.”

A jangly, dancing bassline drives “Mediterranean X Film,” before swerving into a more malevolent, David Lynchian melodrama on “Discotheques.” Jim’s hollowed out, haunted salutation “Welcome to my discotheques” then details all the pills, “every type of boy and girl” and all manner of self-sabotaging substances that have likely been ingested by the notoriously hard-partying Reid brothers over their own discotheque misadventures. “jamcod” opens to a metallic synth beat worthy of Trent Reznor, and Jim’s punky, stoner drawl might convince you he’s not 62 but still a reckless 20-something who parties too hard (“I’m not looking at the ceiling because I’m face down on the floor”).

When the distorted throb of guitar riffs build layer-upon-layer in “Pure Poor,” flickers of Reznor re-surface, as the song hints at a grungy, industrial Nine Inch Nails banger before slowing down and snaking into a Velvet Underground-style drone (“billions of years, oceans of tears”) of intoxicated, melted guitar distortion, tinkling keyboard and shimmering wails of noise. Reid’s voice proves its versatility here more than anywhere on the album, transforming from a youthful languor to a haggard, exhausted croon. “Chemical Animal,” too, is a paean to the reckless, misanthropic, younger Jim—the one who barely disguised his praise for cocaine (see albums Psychocandy and Stoned & Dethroned for prime examples). Within its murky, hazy depths is a nod to Joy Division’s “Transmission,” as the melodic, hypnotic basslines get into your heartbeat and your bloodstream. There’s a primal appeal to that dark, thrumming mantra. “I fill myself with chemicals to hide the dark shit I don’t show,” admits a mordant Jim. It’s both vulnerable and defiantly candid.

A decade ago, Zoe Howe’s biography, The Jesus and Mary Chain: Barbed Wire Kisses, told the story of the Reid’s upbringing in East Kilbride, near Glasgow. The sons of a factory worker father and a mother who worked shifts in a fish and chip shop, Jim and William got their kicks by listening to the radio and creating their own raucous, noisy sonic world. They were kids who’d been given nothing on a silver spoon, and they never owed nobody anything. It gave them a frisson of chaos, and their early years of violent, riot-fueled gigs and subsequent venue bans attested to their wild nature. It could have ended with a bang, but 40 years later—and a decade since Howe’s book—the Reid brothers, the eternal soul of the Jesus and Mary Chain, have released a dynamic, dramatic and triumphant testament to their survival and talent. A Reid brothers autobiography has been promised this year. For now, Glasgow Eyes is Jim and William at marching back towards their finest, in harmony after all they’ve been through.

Read our recent profile on the Jesus and Mary Chain here.