The Jesus And Mary Chain - Psychocandy (Deluxe Edition)

Arguably Psychocandy is an album with one trick and one trick alone; Beach Boys melodies meet Velvet Underground feedback and beats, all cranked up to ten and beyond, along with plenty of echo. However, what a trick it is. Following up on the promise of the earliest singles, the Jesus and Mary Chain with Psychocandy arguably created a movement without meaning to, one that itself caused echoes in everything from bliss-out shoegaze to snotty Britpop and back again. The best tracks were without question those singles, anti-pop yet pure pop at the same time: "Just Like Honey," starting off like the Ronettes heard in a canyon and weirdly beautiful with its bells, "You Trip Me Up" and its slinking sense of cool, and most especially "Never Understand." Storming down like a rumble of bricks wrapped in cotton candy and getting more and more frenetic at the end, when there's nothing but howls and screaming noise, it is one hell of a track. However, at least in terms of sheer sonic violence and mayhem, most of the other cuts were pretty hard to beat, as sprawling, amped-up messes like "The Living End" (which later inspired both a band and a movie title) and "In a Hole." "My Little Underground" is actually the secret gem on the album, with a great snarling guitar start, an almost easy-going melody and a great stuttering chorus; not quite the Who but not quite anything else. What the Reids sing about (entirely interchangeable combinations regarding girls, sex, drugs, speed, and boredom in more or less equal measure) is nothing compared to the perfectly disaffected way those sentiments are delivered. Bobby Gillespie's "hit the drums and then hit them again" style makes Moe Tucker seem like Neil Peart, but arguably in terms of sheer economy he doesn't need to do any more.

The Jesus And Mary Chain - Darklands (Deluxe Edition)

Few bands since The Velvet Underground dared write a laconic, lazy ballad, fewer still would dare open an album with a laconic, lazy ballad, but so is the confidence and key strengths of Darklands that the Reid brothers could keep the fast paced, energy lite, single made Happy When It Rains for later. Where Strangeways, Here We Come was clever and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me was eccentric, ‘Darklands’ was a bona fide rock classic, the lineage of The Beatles, The  Rolling Stones, Slade and , naturally, The Velvet Underground on one record. And what an opener it is, the title track sung and embellished by William’s softer tones (Jim Reid’s snarl would brace the song when performed live in later years). Broadened by a Lennon like vulnerability and sanctified by one of William Reid’s finer guitar licks, this was a strangely beautiful song from a band that shocked the world with fiery feedback on their debut a mere two years earlier. “I’m going to the darklands/To talk in rhyme/With my chaotic soul” William chimed, Lennon in delivery, Lennon in lyric, no album had opened in such a stark manner since Lennon cried for a mother he never had. Their most arresting song after ‘Some Candy Talking’, this was a piece more akin to Eliotian soul-searching than supposed heroin consumption.
Produced by Bill Price and William Reid, this was a decidely more commercial album than their debut, less reverb used and greater emphasis on melody. And such maturity worked, Down On Me and Cherry Came Too among their finest output, gravitas and weight in place of wall of gravitated reverb. While a band to the outside world, within the studio, the record was entirely the product of both Reid brothers, a drum machine taking the place of Bobby Gillespie (Gillespie’s attentions now found themselves entirely with Primal Scream, the future nineties dance zeitgeist). It’s a device used to strong effect, Happy When It Rains and April Skies more metric and direct than the sound of real drums. Layered with some of the most inventive indie guitar playing outside of The Smiths, William Reid’s style goes from pysch pop to proto punk with ease, versatility and nuance on both tracks, one of the most underrated guitarists of his generation.
A decade before Liam Gallagher made a career from nasal swearing, Jim Reid’s swagger came through vinyl with an audible middle finger salute for all to hear. Less Sex Pistol style shock, more Rolling Stone swagger rock, Jim was the ultra-late eighties indie king, equal parts cool and crazy. You can hear the energy of a live performance radiating through the speakers of April Skies, coda heavy in delivery. Happy When It Rains and Deep One Perfect Morning were deceptively optimistic, Jim’s delivery resonating a Dylanesque scepticism. (“Was I ever happy, full stop?”  Jim later told The Guardian in 2015, every inch of sincerity. “In the Mary Chain, I guess, as in life, happiness is just fleeting.”), ebullient to the disenfranchised twenty five year olds that made up the core of the Mary Chain’s audience. Nine Million Rainy Days, maxed to the walls with genial playing and plying brought a stoved sloved groove before The Stone Roses and Oasis perfected the formula, one of the most excitingly placid rock tunes of the eighties. Guitar amped and ready, this proved a shoe gazer two sizes than anything My Bloody Valentine would ever accomplish.
Braced, placed and three chord ready, Darklands had the veracity and tenacity of a live gig (and at thirty five minutes, a good fifteen minutes longer than their notoriously short early twenty minute sets), exciting, cerebral and cool, one of the best Scottish albums of all time.

The Jesus And Mary Chain - Some Candy Talking 2x7''

If you like Psychocandy, you'll like this. The band is in the same general mode without the mild epic streak that came into play later on Darklands. Yet the EP is still highly recommendable provided you're on board with JAMC's style. I mean, being a bit of a re-tread of one of the best debut LPs from the 80s isn't a bad thing at all. Where the debut was exciting in portions and perhaps lazy in others, this brief release whittles down the band's three essential elements: Some Candy Talking their loud modernized tributes to 1950s pop; Psycho Candy not only reinforces their obsession with sweet treats, but also through their low-key chiming melodies probably influenced groups like Galaxie 500 and Real Estate; and finally, their fondness for amp-destroying fuzz squall on Hit that allows JAMC to reveal their periodic resentment of song writing. A sweet and pretty single that foreshadowed, at the time, what was to come with Darklands. A must for any Jesus And Mary Chain fans collection.

The Jesus And Mary Chain - Just Like Honey 12''

The Jesus and Mary Chain, centered on Scottish brothers Jim and William Reid, released their debut album in 1985. While it was a minor hit at the time, it kicked off the entire shoegaze genre that Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, eventually ended a few years later with an album that defined and destroyed the aesthetic with overwhelming, distorted force. The sound on this early record was indebted to post-punk guitar innovation as much as 60s wall-of-sound pop from the likes of Phil Spector.  In fact, you can hear the same drum sound echoed in one of the most well-known pop hits of all time, Be My Baby by The Ronettes. Just Like Honey is a picture of cool, the kind of song that makes me reach for sunglasses and a leather jacket, wishing for a cool breeze to blow my hair back. It breathes romance and danger with the thick smell of nostalgia. It’s a song to lose myself into over and over again. When the song gets lodged in my head for days, I welcome it back with open arms.