Lofted above the main House of Blues club, local favorites Burglary Years and Teenender prepare for the after party of a lifetime in the club’s Foundation Room bar. A sense of competition between the show downstairs and theirs upstairs is lightly felt in all senses; the band downstairs have armed themselves with enough distortion and feedback to rattle every bottle and glass off the tables. All this considered, the prospect of being an “after show” on a drizzling Tuesday night sounds more like an exercise in disappointment, but both bands exuded nothing but pure elation for the opportunity. Considering both bands were conceived in dream pop worship, the chance to follow The Jesus and Mary Chain after performing their seminal, Psychocandy, front to back is the closest thing either band have at this point to ascending to a guitarist’s Valhalla.

“When I was about 14 or 15, my little brother played ‘Just Like Honey’ for me and it was like nothing I’ve ever heard,” Greg Cook, singer of Burglary Years reminisced. “Him and I went to see Lost In Translation later that year, which would get us both into My Bloody Valentine, Death in Vegas, and Air, but his incessant playing of that song really resonated with me.” “‘Honey’ just sets the perfect tone for that film,” Brian McKenna added. “My friend used to bump [the soundtrack] in the car in high school all the time!”, additionally citing The Sundays and Cocteau Twins as major inspirations for his own work in Teenender. While Lost In Translation renewed interest in distortion-heavy angst led in part by the JAMC’s scoring of the film’s closing “unintelligible whisper and kiss” scene, the beauty of these Psychocandy anniversary shows is how fans from the band’s early era of terror on down to the millennial crop of sullen youth find the same hedonistic pleasure from the album’s deafening legacy.

Openers Black Ryder were practically tailor made for an audience so deeply split by age, operating in the same revivalist/revisionist spirit as The Horrors sans garage goth phase. Yes, one could dismiss them for photocopying the Mazzy Star and My Bloody Valentine playbooks nearly word for word (and for having a song sublimely titled “Santaria” to boot), but Black Ryder tackle shoegaze revivalism with such sincere reverence that it’s hard not to root for the fact they’re opening for, as singer Aimee Nash put it, “the greatest band of all time.”

As for said “greatest band”, The Jesus and Mary Chain have taken on a more humble stance in their middle age, asking the audience politely if they’d like to hear cuts from their five other LPs before diving into their Psychocandy set. After cutting through b-sides and singles from Honey’s Dead, Automatic, and Darklands, the humbleness ended abruptly with “Upside Down”, the band’s ear-splitting first single from 1984. Age has only helped Jim Reid’s already-low register, keeping a baseline to the band’s sprawling assault through feedback. Guitarist William Reid is still a mad scientist of feedback, only slightly toning down the ‘buzzsaws dropped into a pile of metal piping’ chaos without losing the heart-racing thrill of loudness.

After the briefest intermission, the “Be My Baby”-copped beat of “Honey” pervaded from a pitch black stage to a crowd-wide gasp and cheer. Everyone had to know it was coming, but its sugary buzz still felt as vital as the first time it entered speakers. In front of me, a teenage girl bunny-hopped and turned excitedly to her father, who made almost the same exact motions before turning. Couples embraced. Heads rolled back in ecstasy. Bald spots and slightly doughier frames didn’t matter against the fact that the entire House of Blues floor became seventeen again for the next 45 minutes.

Considering the fact that baby boomers were hollering for “more feedback!” and “amp to 11!”, the age reversal might’ve been related to the loyalty surrounding the album, but it didn’t hurt that the Reid brothers distilled everything live that made Psychocandy so groundbreaking on record. Dancing through the squeals of “The Living End”, “My Little Underground”, or “Never Understand” was practically mandatory in the same way that swaying underneath the House of Blues’s gargantuan disco ball during “Cut Dead” was bound to happen. When “It’s So Hard” eventually arrived, Reid practically had to explain himself for leaving over the moaning crowd (quote: “It’s the last song on the record, so I guess this is our last song.”) Such is a testament to the fact that JAMC are one of those rare acts that zeroed in on something both dangerously youthful and eternal, leaving a crowd as disoriented and euphoric as their first taste of “Honey”.

For all photos from the show, view the gallery below.