When I first heard them 40 years ago, I thought the Jesus And Mary Chain were the most exciting new band I’d heard since The Sex Pistols. They still sound great in 2023.

After listening to Never Understand I can remember a couple of friends mocking them as “derivative” which I found a risible critique, as well as an irrelevant one – no one talks about bands being “derivative” any more because everything’s been done before.

It’s true the Mary Chain wore their influences on their sleeves – it sounded like they’d put the Velvets and Suicide, Ramones and Beach Boys in a blender with a lot of feedback. But no one had ever put those together before. And definitely not like that.

Today of course they’re revered as influential themselves – the template for an entire movement (Shoegaze) as well as inspiring obvious successors from Mazzy Star to My Bloody Valentine and far beyond.

And now they’re back, with their first record since 2017, when they last made an album, featuring collabs with the likes of Isobel Campbell and Sky Ferreira. I missed that one completely, and would probably have been sceptical, but this first track from their new one is fantastic.

It’s got a throbbing electronic pulse, a coolly detached vocal drenched in ennui, and deafening bursts of distorted guitar. In other words, it’s classic Jesus And Mary Chain.

Looking forward now to that new album, Glasgow Eyes, when it drops next March.