Feedback, riots, and the Shangri-Las. Audience members gazing at their shoes. Audience members gazing at other audience members’ shoes in mute shoegaze envy. Audience members gazing back at their own shoes in mortified horror and thinking, “My God! My feet are preposterously huge! I’m a fucking CLOWN!”
As the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “Gaze long enough at your shoes, and your shoes will gaze back at you.”
All of this is a roundabout and utterly frivolous way of getting to The Jesus and Mary Chain and their beloved 1985 shoegaze classic Psychocandy. They didn’t invent the genre—that honor is generally bestowed upon My Bloody Valentine—but their sound certainly hypnotized a lot of crowds, that is when said crowds weren’t rioting, which I must say surprises me—it can’t be easy to lay waste to a club while staring down your plimsouls.
Founded by a pair of Scottish brothers, Jim and William Reid, who amusingly settled upon a vocalist by flipping a coin—Jim lost and was forced behind the microphone—The Jesus and Mary Chain formula was simple—lay a whole shitload of radical guitar distortion over chewy pop melodies. Or that was the idea anyway.
Early on they sounded like the Ramones, but if life has taught me anything it’s there isn’t a single problem in this world a wall of white noise won’t solve. So that’s what they did—piled on the fuzz and the feedback and the distortion until they had something brand spanking new, anxiety of influence problem solved.
They loved the Shangri-Las so much they wanted to BE the Shangri-Las (“We all love The Shangri-Las, and one day we’re going to make Shangri-Las records”) and they were fans of The Beach Boys and Pink Floyd as well, and one of the songs on Psychocandy makes me think they were fans of Sonny Bono too. And the Velvet Underground, natch. But what they liked the most was a chewy, chewy melody—or so goes the myth. We’ll get into that.
About the album: making it the Reid brothers thought of themselves, in Jim’s words, as “budding Phil Spectors.” Wall of Sound, meet Wall of Noise. As for the title, sibling Jim called it “a one-word review of what it contains.” Which is terse and perfect, and rather makes this and all reviews redundant. In any event, Psychocandy remains probably their best record, although it’s much quieter follow-up, 1987’s Darklands, has its champions.
Some of its songs put the band’s melodic gifts front and center—opener “Just Like Honey” could be a girl group classic. The feedback is present, but the song’s loveliness wins out. The same is true of the slow and lovely “Cut Dead”—when Jim Reid isn’t singing nonsense he’s being kicked in the head, and if that isn’t being cutting dead I don’t know what is. The big drum opening to “Sowing Seeds” is Girl Group 101, and if its melody isn’t as captivating as that of “Just Like Honey,” once again the feedback is sublimated to the melody, the lovely hush and the big vocal echo.
I cite the three songs because they truly fuse lovely melodies with white noise in a way that would justify comparisons to the Shangri-Las. On most of the rest of the album The Jesus and Mary Chain supersaturate songs that simply aren’t gorgeous enough, in this fellow’s opinion, to justify the hype. Which isn’t to say Psychocandy isn’t a winner—there’s much to be said for songs like the mid-tempo “Taste the Floor,” which is so drowned in white noise you’re amazed when the guitar solos come in and ladle even more of it over the song. There’s no girl group classic hiding under there, but what’s so wrong with noise for noise’s sake? The punk-supercharged “In a Hole” takes things a step further—even the solo can’t up the noise ante any.
“It’s So Hard” sounds ugly, wrong, like it was recorded in the cellar the Ramones were so scared of, with the sound bouncing off the walls and drummer Bobby Gillispie—soon to split and form Primal Scream—pounding so hard you’re afraid the ceiling will collapse. Brother William sings this one, and there’s no hush on his voice—he sounds desperate, afraid. The streamlined frenetic “My Little Underground” opens with guitar feedback that proceeds to melt all over each and every note the whole way through. Reid sounds hip as fuck through the murk, the murk comes alive, you get 57 varieties of noise in the same song! But I’ll say it again—degunk the damn song and you do not have a sweet little melody. Far from it.
“The Hardest Walk,” different story. The boys rein in the feedback (relatively speaking) so as not to drown out a melody that is oh so gorgeous you’re tempted to think these snotty Scots have actual emotions. And the guitars, when they do come in, kind of sound like electric bagpipes bursting into flames.“Taste of Cindy” should be noisier because frankly noise and a few cool nonsense syllables are all it has going for it. The same goes for “Never Understand,” although the guy screaming at the end ups the interest level some. “Inside Me” sounds like Joy Division to me. Joy Division slathered in white noise sans Ian Curtis. I’m ambivalent.
Look, my take on Psychocandy has always been this—noise great, not enough Shangri-Las. Strip away the feedback and the fuzz and the distortion and the number of truly great melodies aren’t as high as everybody gives The Jesus and Mary Chain credit for. What you’re left with is a mood in most cases, established by J. Reid’s chilly and distant vocals and the band’s formalistic song structures. I think highly of Psychocandy, but not so highly that I ever put it on, which makes me wonder how highly I think of it, really.
Frankly, I consider it a hipster totem—all white noise and white cool, when I’d prefer me some white heat. Which isn’t to say the white noise isn’t appreciated. The world can never have enough of the stuff, it’s a scientific fact. Just don’t try to sell me on the idea that The Jesus and Mary Chain are the second coming of the Shangri-Las.
Damn, since when did my feet get so big?
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+
