Review: Jesus and Mary Chain bring 'Psychocandy' back to Union Transfer

In November 1985, sibling sons of Glasgow Jim and William Reid - then the centerpieces of the metronomic Jesus and Mary Chain - released their first and best album, Psychocandy. It's an album that remains definitive and influential for its meeting of early Beach Boys-like melodies and slowed-down Velvet Undergroundish noise.

With shadowy guitar feedback as fuzzy as their hair, the sunglass-wearing brothers' seminal surging sound and dry, minimalistic rhythm was a sonic primal scream topped by lip-licking romanticized lyrics that were alternately syrup-sweet (literally, as in "Just Like Honey" and sinister, "In a Hole"). The 30th anniversary of Psychocandy was worth celebrating, prompting the Reids to reconvene at Union Transfer on Tuesday.

Shrouded in billowing smoke and shown in silhouette due to a preponderance of backlighting effects, the Jesus and Mary Chain seemed to crave anonymity (singer Jim Reid couldn't duck behind his hair like he did as a kid, as his new 'do is neatly sheared, plus he forgot his shades).

They played Psychocandy as a piece of work, not unlike other single album-only events presided over by Brian Wilson or Bruce Springsteen, forcing the listener to consider every nuance of the band's debut.

Psychocandy - in this live setting - sounded like the original moment it came from: 1985. It's full of that era's Brit-signature of slow, slurry rise-and-fall melodies (sometimes more Jan & Dean than Beach Boys) and a gauzy, clicking guitar sound borrowed wholesale from the Cure's spidery Robert Smith. Jim Reid's baritone moo and curtly mumbled words about sex, drugs, and post-teen bugged-out bliss became just part of that spiderweb of fuzz and big beats during the slinky "You Trip Me Up" and the stormy "Never Understand." The dynamics of the Reids' metronomic minimalism were more emotionally grand on fuzztone epics "The Living End" and "My Little Underground," less like a calmed, steady pulse and more like a roused, raging patient.

Funnily enough, for all the might of Psychocandy, it was the night's opening reverie of sundry Jesus and Mary Chain songs that had real verve, energy, and light; the grouchy "April Skies," the boogie-buzzing "Some Candy Talking." In particular, "Reverence" sounded like a lost Velvet Underground classic with its "Heroin"-like surge and its talk of dying like the gods and icons of their dreams.

The Psychocandy dessert was good, but the appetizers were better.