The Jesus And Mary Chain New Album Exclusive: “It’s the Mary Chain gone experimental”

The Jesus And Mary Chain’s Jim Read speaks to MOJO about the band’s new album Glasgow Eyes, intra-band brawling, booze and destroying the myth of the Mary Chain.

“WE LOVE doing what we do,” The Jesus And Mary Chain singer Jim Reid tells MOJO from his home in Devon. “But we’re so fucking lazy. We were back in the ’80s, and we were in the ’90s. It gets to a point where you just think, You have to get up off your arse and do something.”

He’s talking about the group’s new LP Glasgow Eyes, their first since 2017’s Damage And Joy, which arrives in March, its title inspired by brother William’s sleeve image.

“A good chunk” was done shortly before Covid hit. With various pieces later recorded by Jim in Devon and William at home in Arizona, a breakthrough accompanied a move to Mogwai’s Castle Of Doom studio, a former Victorian bank in Finnieston, early in 2023.

“It’s a fantastic studio and a lovely building,” says Reid. “I kept saying, The control room’s like the Starship Enterprise or something, I felt like Captain Kirk in this big revolving chair in front of this control console. The gear they’ve got in there is just incredible. From about February onwards ’til about May, it was pretty intensive. It had been a bit bitty, just sketches and stuff, and it wasn’t until we hit Glasgow that it really started to feel like a record – like, Hey, it’s the Mary Chain!”

There’ll be people who want to kill us for destroying the myth of the Mary Chain
Jim Reid

He admits his idea of the group in 2024 may not be the same as everybody else’s. “There’s a lot of electronic sounds on it,” Jim says. “I mean, some of William’s guitar playing, I think, veers into jazz almost. It’s the Mary Chain gone experimental, I suppose. To me, it just sounds like the Mary Chain, but, as usual, there’ll be people that are totally satisfied and gloriously happy with it, and, if you look on these little social media threads, there’ll be people who want to kill us for destroying the myth of the Mary Chain. It’s hard. We like it, and if people get into it, as our old American manager used to say (adopts raspy, seen-it-all voice), ‘Hey, that’s gravy!’”

The siblings’ famously combustive interactions are also examined. Lead single Jamcod (that’s JAMC-O.D., rather than ‘Jam Cod’ as BBC 6Music had it) relates to William’s departure after a disastrous 15-minute show at Los Angeles’ House Of Blues in September 1998.

“So many people ask about that night that the shit hit the fan and it all blew up that I just thought, Let’s put it in a song and maybe they’ll stop asking,” says Jim. “We found out where the boundaries were then, that if you step over that line, it’s going to be World War Three, and there was World War Three in the ’90s. Now I know that if I say certain things, there will be consequences, and so does he, so when it’s getting a bit heated, we’ll just back off, give each other a bit of space.

“The problem lies when it comes to drinking and stuff like that,” he goes on. “Because once you start drinking, all of that seems like a good idea. There are pretty heated arguments when we’ve both had a couple of jars. I was drinking during the recording of this record and I’ve since stopped again… you’ve still got your eye on that line in the sand and you know that if you step over it, there’s going to be trouble. We’re sitting on top of Guy Fawkes’ barrels of dynamite, smoking cigars, thinking, Fuck, we better be careful. Because I know what can happen.”

THAT SAID, Jim acknowledges the creative fuel provided by extreme experience, even if it is retrospective. “I’m sitting on my couch wearing a pair of slippers with daytime TV on mute right now,” he says. “I mean, that doesn’t make for a great song. So thinking back to the times where it was like, you get up in the morning and the day was successful if I hooked up with somebody who was going to sell me drugs… you were basically acting totally on instinct, and it was all about getting drugs. The humanity got sucked out for a while, I suppose – the idea of drugs and glamour is totally a myth. So that was [album track] Chemical Animal.”

Songs including The Eagles And The Beatles and Hey Lou Reid are, hears MOJO, for William to explain. “A lot of these songs are just like us looking back on times gone by, to the period before the band,” says Jim, “when we were looking for an inroad, to get the band together.” Elsewhere, Fay Fife from The Rezillos guests on Venal Joy, and Jim’s girlfriend Rachel Conte duets with him on Girl 71.

While the album creation process is a painful one (“I have to say I hate it”), it’s balanced with positivity. “When you go into a studio and make a record, it’s like you’re trying to will about 25 butterflies into a jar with your mind control,” Jim says. “You’re thinking, Is this happening? And then the fucking butterflies just land in the jar one day, and you’re like, Wow, we’ve done that, again! There’s something vaguely magical about making a record – at the end, when you’re playing it back, you think, Well… here we are again.”