Hands up who thought Jesus Jones had packed it all in years ago? Yup, me too if I’m honest. The fact they haven’t, and are still clinging on to the music seen by a mere thread, made for a real treat. If you like a marriage of indie, dance and industrial techno that is. Which I do.

Date: September 10, 2014

Venue: Rescue Rooms

More and more in this musical age, just when you least expect it, a band re-surfaces seemingly from nowhere to take you back in time on a journey through hazy memories and narcotic, alcoholic shambolic moments from your past.

Cue Jesus Jones, who arise like a phoenix from the burning embers of alternative dance and industrial electro, sprouting up with a cheery hello as if they’ve never been away.

Who knows why the original members have decided that 2014 is the year for them to embark on a headline tour (after previously touring as support with The Wonder Stuff last year). Are those mortgage repayments starting to weigh heavy, or is that old spark suddenly beginning to flicker again?

Who knows and who really cares? Because their return, whether it be slight or lengthy, seems to be a welcome one.

The Rescue Rooms is packed with former grebos and crusties, eager to reminisce about the halcyon days of the late 80/early 90 indie/dance crossover scene.

Playing their 1991 breakthrough album Doubt “top to tail”, as Mike Edwards terms it, that album is played in its entirety. It includes International Bright Young Thing, a reckless, maladjusted and rushed version which hinders it not one iota and instead reposits it somewhere between punk and rock.

The album also contains the song that catapulted them into chart heroes, Right Here, Right Now, and, “flip over to side two”, and we get another classic in the form of Real, Real, Real.

Before penultimate album track Stripped, Edwards alludes to new material, announcing that “this is the 2014 version”. Cryptic? Maybe. Interesting, certainly.

After Doubt has been rinsed, the band cherry pick from their back catalogue. Zeroes and Ones is an itchy techno melting pot of bleeps and beeps, while debut single Info Freako screeches into a quagmire of electronic whirls and indie swirls. Only Devil You Know is missing from the party.

Still relevant? Jesus, yeah!