+++ The Jesus and Mary Chain Play Darklands’ +++ Still startling, still compelling and, to a certain extent, still fighting, The Jesus and Mary Chain are a force of nature, and perhaps one of pop’s last enigmas. Like the punks who inspired them, they remain ‘the misfits of the music world’, and while their name might have been synonymous with chaos during the 80s, they were and will always be, as Jim Reid famously deadpanned, ‘the best’. It’s 35 years since brothers Jim and William Reid first revealed the dark magic they’d been conjuring up in their bedroom in East Kilbride, unveiling a mesmerising concoction of white noise and whispered lyrics, Spector rhythms, black leather and shadows. Their arrival would cut through mainstream pop culture like a razor, and, as they’ve proved with their most recent album Damage And Joy, that blade is as sharp as ever.