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The Jesus and Mary Chain


All Ages

$39.50—$69.50 advance

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Tickets are also available at the venue box office, or by phone at 1 855 985-5000.

Band Details

The Jesus and Mary Chainthejesusandmarychain.uk.com

From the Promoter

Jesus & Mary Chain will take the stage at Massey Hall in Toronto on May 12th as part of their North American tour. Tickets go on-sale on Friday, March 3rd at 10am via ticketmaster.ca.

The Jesus and Mary Chain emerged from Lanarkshire, Scotland, to become one of the most influential bands of their era.

What followed was a rush of creativity and controversy in which the power of their music – most strikingly the landmark debut ‘Psychocandy’ – was matched by the volatility of their relationship. Their journey sparked a wider influence. Not only did their success help Alan McGee’s Creation Records to flourish into the home of Britain’s most critically acclaimed bands from My Bloody Valentine to Oasis to Super Furry Animals, but early drummer Bobby Gillespie made history of his own with Primal Scream.

By 1998, however, chaos had devolved into terminal conflict and the JAMC story was over.

In their absence, the list of bands influenced by the JAMC blueprint seemed to run on and on, while Sofia Coppola’s use of ‘Just Like Honey’ in the closing scene of ‘Lost in Translation’ allowed a new generation the chance to discover JAMC. In the years that followed, Coachella repeatedly tried to persuade them to reform the band: a ploy that was finally rewarded when JAMC made their big comeback in 2007 – accompanied by special guest Scarlett Johansson.

And while the live shows kept on coming – including a special back-to-back ‘Psychocandy’ tour – the prospect of a new album remained tantalizingly out of reach. The challenges were multiple: disagreements on where and how to record, together with Jim’s reluctance to leave a comfortable-but-quiet life with his young family to spend months abroad.

Work on the album, subsequently titled ‘Damage and Joy’ (a reference to the English translation of schadenfreude), began in September 2015, with producer Youth also contributing bass and diplomacy to proceedings during sessions in London, Dublin and Granada, Spain.

News of the album broke to the world at large via Alan McGee – now again their manager – in November 2016 and the lead track ‘Amputation’ emerged just a few weeks later. Its waves of distorted guitar flow under Jim’s insouciant vocal delivery collide to create a hypnotic address to his feelings of “being edited out of the whole music business and wondering what had gone wrong. We didn’t seem to fit in anywhere and I felt like a rock ‘n’ roll amputation.”

Elsewhere, ‘Damage and Joy’ expertly judges that precarious balancing act of needing to both grow and to remain true to the spirit that captured people’s imagination the first time around. William’s ‘All Things Must Pass’ is a refined re-energized version of the song that previously appeared on ‘Upside Down: The Best of The Jesus and Mary Chain’ in which tales of hedonistic excess simultaneously feel like both a cry for help and an extension of their sardonic black humour.

That’s a trait that emphasized in ‘Facing Up To The Facts’ with the couplet “I hate my brother and he hates me / That’s the way it’s supposed to be.” It’s also not a lyric that Jim considers to be at all remarkable. “At times we do hate each other, it’s been largely what’s fuelled the Mary Chain. It would be just as correct to say that I love him too, but that doesn’t sound so good, does it?”

Promoter

Live Nationlivenation.com