The Jesus and Mary Chain
Damage and Joy
ADA/Warner Music
THE first album of the 21st century from East Kilbride's battling brothers finds them sounding much as they did last millennium, as everyone hoped it would. The opening tale of lost love, Amputation, starts with the words "Trying to win your interest back", but William and Jim Reid have never lost the ability to attract attention. With 14 tracks and clocking in at not far short of an hour, Damage and Joy is mostly produced by former Killing Joke bassist Martin Glover, universally known as Youth, whose hit-making skills have also been applied to the Scot-rock of Primal Scream, The Shamen and Texas. Jim is joined by a bevvy of vocal foils in Bernadette Denning, Linda Fox, Sky Ferreira and Isobel Campbell, of whom the latter is the most successful – as her Nancy and Lee-style recordings with Mark Lanegan would suggest. There is a pop gloss to the second of the two songs on which she features, The Two of Us, that also emerges later on Presidici, and puts the JAMC firmly in Undertones territory – which is a complement. Get On Home, by contrast, revisits the blues, and Facing Up To The Facts notes: "I hate my brother and he hates me/That's the way it's supposed to be." No, really?
Keith Bruce
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