John And Jehn
Upstairs At The Garage, London
10/06/2010

He’s a translucent Jason Pierce with cheekbones you could do some extreme skiing off, she’s a fierce Purdey-cropped beacon of glacial diffidence; to be honest, if you squinted a bit, John And Jehn could pass for France’s answer to The Kills, only with less outrageously oscillating quality control. They’re certainly more effortlessly classy than many a more self-consciously stylised proposition and possessed of keen instincts for both hostile horror and earwormy alt.pop. Yet it seems lately, and intriguingly, they’ve developed an uncharacteristic penchant for inclusivity. “Come forward,” beckons Jehn early on, “We won’t hurt you!” Kind offer and all that, but, initially at least, no-one could be blamed for keeping their distance…
Resistance, however, will prove to be genuinely futile within but a handful of songs. ‘Vampire’, for instance, has an abundance of fairground gothic charms embodied in its churchy keys and prowling guitar, along with vocals that hark back to some of the more ferocious DIY exponents of the early 80s, channelling the Bodysnatchers most of all. While ‘Oh My Love’ is captivatingly serpentine, its synthetic strings (seemingly – and fascinatingly – reconstituted from the likes of Air) and clashing chords calling to mind nothing so much as a Siouxsieian stomp enhanced by Polly Harvey at her most vengeful. And ‘And We Run’, a highlight of the recent ‘Time For The Devil’ anyway, is a properly majestic fiesta and the stuff, in some ages at least, of bona fide chart-devouring, resembling as it does both The Killers at their most frenetic and Killing Joke at their most friendly.
Sadly, though, a handful of songs is all we get, with even the pair themselves appearing caught unawares by how truncated proceedings are. But let’s be honest: there are few bands for whom an as-quick-as-they-came disappearance into darkness would be more hauntingly appropriate…  

Iain Moffat