Fronted by the Reid brothers Jim and William, The Jesus and Mary Chain first reformed to play the Coachella festival back in 2007. Despite regular touring – most notably a 2015 world tour which revisited their landmark album PSYCHOCANDY – it took some time before they could agree on a plan to record a much-mooted seventh album.
The album commences with ‘Amputation’, in which waves of distorted guitar
and Jim’s insouciant vocal delivery collide to create a hypnotic track which
addresses his feelings of “being edited out of the whole music business…
I felt like a rock ‘n’ roll amputation.”
Other highlights include a refined and re-energised new version of ‘All Things
Must Pass’ which previously featured in the TV show ‘Heroes’ and then on
‘Upside Down: The Best of The Jesus and Mary Chain’; the raw garage-rock of
‘Facing Up To The Facts’ which offers the revealing lyric: “I hate my
brother and he hates me / That’s the way it’s supposed to be”’; and
the jagged power-pop that simmers in ‘The Two of Us’.
The album also features performances from the band’s touring drummer Brian Young as well as former Lush bassist Phil King.