The band opened with April Skies, before bursting into Head On, a favourite moment of crushed-out pop from Automatic. Loud and swoony, the line "I could die and I wouldn't mind" seemed really appropriate.
The band was mostly obscured by clouds of smoke, with lights that faded from pinks and golds to blues and whites and dramatic flashes of strobes.
Jim Reid loomed in silhouette over the crowd, while sibling guitarist William Reid's curly mop of grey hair bobbed away as he produced waves of feedback from his side of the stage. The mystique was well and truly alive.
Any worries about ageing rock stars immediately faded as they launched into Reverence, Jim screaming "I wanna die just like Jesus Christ," while William blasted out layers of fuzzy daggers of noise that pierced through the audience. The energy in the room just exploded.
Jim Reid was captivating as he leaned on the mic stand as if he was too cool and tortured to hold himself up.
He sang "ba ba bas","aa aa ohs" and "da da das" like a Ronnette, while staggering and skulking around the stage, giving a wry little wave at the end of each song.
When he wasn't singing, everyone just screamed at him.
The band ended the first half of the show with Inside Out, then after a break barely short enough to get a drink, they were back
The isolated Spector-like drums of Just Like Honey set the tone for Psychocandy, followed by shimmering waves of perfect pop.
As the performance went on, it was so hypnotic that the songs seemed to bleed into each other. I alternated between swaying gently with closed eyes to quiet songs like the Hardest Walk and Cut Dead, and dancing furiously to others, like Never Understand and Trip Me Up.
Psychocandy is an album full of mood swings, simultaneously dark and brooding and desperately romantic and blissed out - once described by Jim as "if the Shangri-Las were backed up by a noise band".
Through blurred eyes and feedback it was about as close as you could get to being fully immersed in the world of the album.
Everything culminated in this incredible suspension of disbelief, where no matter what year it was or where we were, this was an authentic Jesus and Mary Chain experience rather than a tired reunion show.
But Jim Reid told the Guardian last year that the past is the past.
"Even when the album was out, it was about riots and falling over drunk on stage," he said. "It was about everything but the music. If you're looking for skinny young kids in a strop, kicking their guitars, stay at home."
Somehow, even if they weren't the anarchic kids of '85 getting drunk and walking off after 15 minutes, they managed to successfully recreate a feeling in time - which is what an album tour ought to do.
The Jesus and Mary Chain proved they're still painfully cool. And that's what matters the most.
