The Jesus And Mary Chain, Live at Barrowlands - album review

Download: Some Candy Talking; Just Like Honey; The Hardest Walk; Never Understand; You Trip Me Up

The Jesus and Mary Chain performance I attended back in the mid-Eighties disintegrated into a riot before they had time to establish their musical bona fides.

Those would soon arrive in the shape of their Psychocandy debut album, a landmark of UK indie rock whose blending of potent Beach Boy-ish melodies with raging guitar feedback signposted an intriguing potential direction for rock ’n’ roll.

This 30th-anniversary performance of the album at Glasgow’s Barrowlands doesn’t convey quite the sense of risk that accompanied their early shows, but the cocktail of noise and melody has largely retained its potency. Its appeal lies in the way that it takes rock classicism – the enticing grammar of tunes and harmonies – and lashes it to the nose-cone of a rocketing cacophony whose eventual destination is never certain.