Supported by fellow Scots The Jesus and Mary Chain, this powerful, emotionally charged show was a jubilant vote of confidence
Only a few weeks ago, you’d have expected this outdoor extravaganza to be empty but for a small lynch mob throwing rocks, so unanimously hateful was social-media opinion on Bobby Gillespie’s crew.
Some of the allegations from an inquest statement widely shared by keyboardist Martin Duffy’s son Louie have since been disputed: Duffy, who’d been battling alcoholism and last December tragically passed away after a fall at his Brighton home, apparently didn’t die “penniless”. Still, wouldn’t it have been better for all bereaved parties if Twitter’s judge-and-jury hadn’t irresponsibly passed sentence on the evidence of but one witness?
Post-controversy, South Facing’s Friday billing was like a rallying of the troops to sweep away those online-cancellation blues. Late afternoon in Crystal Palace Bowl, bruised skies threatened overhead until Gillespie’s childhood friends, The Jesus and Mary Chain, blasted away the storm clouds with feedback-drenched alt-pop.
East Kilbride’s Reid brothers – singer Jim sleek and brooding up front, guitarist William a rotund blur of riffs and flyaway grey curls – were galvanised by both a propulsive new drummer, Elastica’s Justin Welch, in a role originally filled by Gillespie in their mid-1980s days of riots and smashed guitars, and, for slo-mo classic Just Like Honey, a glammed-up duet with fellow Scot Isobel Campbell.