Holy Jesus [AMC]! Has it already been FOUR DECADES since this headrush of a truly epochal album was originally released and changed the face of music beyond recognition (in some ways)? Psychocandy has officially turned 40! Martin Gray revisits ….

Imagine this if you may: in one room, the sound of a dentist’s drill, which is held aloft, and aimed squarely and decisively towards your face… ready to be plunged into your mouth for a nice thorough rummage to eject all of the accumulated debris that has adhered to your delicate enamels. You have no means of escape by this point, so you have no choice but to submit to your tormentor. You start to writhe and dig backwards into your reclined chair but you cannot sink back any further; resistance is futile. In another moment, you make your displeasure known to your be-masked adversary by emitting a low wailing noise which soon rises progressively in pitch and tone into something more akin to an anguished howl of agony. And still the drill screams on relentlessly.

In another adjoining reception / waiting room, where other variously nervous and detached patients are also waiting, a Beach Boys song is quietly playing on the small transistor radio perched on the filing cabinet behind the secretary. The sweet sound of summer, sand and surf….. just before the bloodshed (oh fuck, I forgot that Dennis Wilson was an erstwhile mate of Charlie Manson’s).

If those two above scenarios don’t sum up more succinctly the quintessential sound and essence of one key song by one of the greatest bands ever in the history of modern music, then I am Elton John’s butler, hairdresser and piano-tuner rolled into one. The song in question? Never Understand. It’s the second single from a pair of spotty oikish siblings from East Kilbride, Jim and William Reid, together with partners-in-crime Douglas Hart and Bobby Gillespie, otherwise known as The Jesus And Mary Chain – and the first of three corking singles to be featured on their groundbreaking and utterly gobsmacking debut album Psychocandy, which was unleashed to an unsuspecting world back in November 1985. FORTY BASTARD LONG YEARS AGO MAAAAN!!!

The rest, as every single pop picker knows, is history. However, for this writer here, it wasn’t always quite as straightforward as some may like to believe. For I have a bit of a confession to make: I initially thought they were just another case of ’emperor’s new clothes’ and, true to my instinctive reaction to anything that is hyped/ ‘bigged up’ by the music press (in this instance the NME and Melody Maker), I was deeply skeptical bordering on plain dismissive, deriding them as a flash in the pan novelty that would soon, like just about everything else hyped up in similar fashion (see Sigue Sigue Sputnik a year later in 1986), disappear back from whence it came.

Furthermore, my haughty stance on the new enfants terrible of noise pop was also partly a result of the music I was still listening to back then in the mid-1980s:  a mix of chart pop and a sprinkling of indie stuff – I have to admit I was shamefully still rather green then to the full ‘alternative universe’ – with the two weirdest and most left field acts I was enjoying at the time being The Residents and Einstürzende Neubauten (the latter’s magnificent Halber Mensch album had also just come out that same year and I was blown away by how abrasively intense and visceral it was so there was really no excusing me turning my nose up at Psychocandy’s gloriously cacophonous racket for that matter, but there you go).

Nevertheless, the turning point duly arrived when the third JAMC single You Trip Me Up was released, and I heard it on John Peel. It then all started to make sense….all that screeing of William’s feedbacking guitars, Douglas’s simple three-note bassline and Bobby’s cavernous drum sound backing a surly Jim lead vocal singing about a destructive relationship. That was the epiphany that ultimately saved me from a fate worse than death of being potentially subsumed deeper, and gasping for breath, within a morass of bland overproduced be-mulleted shoulder pad-sporting MOR crock endorsed by Charles and Diana worshippers. The prospects just seemed far too bleak and terrifying to contemplate.

Of course, this initial aloofness I had was more than fully tempered by the time fourth JAMC single Just Like Honey emerged from its glorious Spector-esque subterranean cocoon, causing me to fall head over heels in love with all three magnificent beatific minutes of the tune. To this day it’s my all time favourite single of the entire 1980s (and there are a lot of strong contenders for that honour, believe me), and one of the ten greatest pop songs EVER recorded. My gushing hyperbole now, in retrospect, may seen wildly over-enthusiastic but I can seriously argue a case for why this song is so fucking goddamned perfect in every way – simply because it has absolutely everything you could possibly wish for in a song that lasts precisely 180 seconds.

Witness the opening drum intro: pure classic 60s Hal Blaine – the master drummer of the Wreckin’ Crew that graced all of Phil Spector’s most divinely celestial moments. The three note bassline for the most part (that’s it – three notes – just simplicity in itself, why over elaborate?). Then the cascade of distorted guitar picking out a delicate melody (minus the trademark feedback this time, thus sacrificing fuzz for clarity), before the reverb-drenched vocals come in. Later on there are even girl backing vocals too – providing a sense of warmth and femininity – something which all previous JAMC singles lacked. The structure is simple and slightly unconventional too – one long extended verse followed by a short instrumental break before the refrain (not chorus) comes in and repeats to the end. That’s it. Perfectly formed and utterly exquisite.

Only one other single released in the 1980s would come close to matching this for succinctness (and it too was similarly short and to the point). That song was There She Goes by The La’s in 1987 – just two years later – another glorious exercise in brevity and pure pop conciseness.

Furthermore, there’s also a truly ingenious case of ‘double edged sword’ that comes in the lyric. Anyone who is a diehard fan of JAMC and has lived, breathed, ate, slept and shagged Psychocandy like a religion already knows what the song is pretty much about, but listen again to the repeated refrain ‘Just Like Honey…’ and it sounds like Jim (and female co-vocalist) are actually really singing ‘Just Like Cunni…’  Thus the song isn’t merely another allegorical paean to drugs, is it? The fact that they can get away with this* in a three minute pop song is what really elevates this track into the pantheon of pure subversive greatness.

(*Supergrass also did the same with their 1999 single Pumping On Your Stereo – guess which word they mispronounced!)

Tellingly, Just Like Honey is also the opening track on Psychocandy, and being placed at the very start of the album’s sequencing, it constitutes a clever masterstroke like no other. Was this ruse deliberate? Only the Reid brothers would be able to answer that one. But it serves a very crucial and significant purpose nonetheless. I would compare it to the insidious tactics of those carnivorous plants like venus fly traps, pitchers and mildews – they entice the victim (in this case the listener) with the aromas of allure, only to then hoodwink them as they land and succumb to the broiling fate that awaits them. Track two The Living End – a paean to motorbiking and hedonism pretty much – does exactly the same thing. The listener has been ensnared by the irresistible perfume charms of ….Honey and now it’s down to business: that of bludgeoning the unwary into submission with a gale force squall of industrial screeching and walls of feedback that sound like they’re rising up from the furnaces of hell. What a glorious deception indeed.

Despite signing to Warners subsidiary Blanco y Negro for the release of all their music after their 1984 debut Upside Down was issued on Alan McGee’s Creation Records, Jim and William already had a sense of total autonomy over how they wanted their records to sound. Thus they opted to produce everything themselves, doing away with the need for any outside interference that would otherwise risk compromising their approach.

Psychocandy has so many moments of pure noise-blasted bliss that, instead of being repelled by it, you feel almost enraptured by this sonic onslaught – as it pricks the synapses and arouses the endorphins that create those feelings of euphoria that people get when they hit that maximum sensory high. It’s like being caught up in a blizzard when you’re nicely wrapped up against the cold – that strangely comforting mind-state when you feel the icy sheets of snow but that sensation is so pleasurable it translates as, and conjures up, warm contentment inside of you. All this despite the lyrics invariably touching upon the main obsessions of love/hate, sex, religion, danger, death and despair : tropes that would inevitably be band staples for much of their subsequent career.

Taking each of Psychocandy’s 14 tracks in turn and extolling their respective virtues would be pointless and gratuitous, suffice to say that there is variety found here and not all just bludgeoning feedback drenched slammers. That would be too easy and would also make the album one dimensional. Instead, there are tender acoustic moments too such as the beautiful reflective Cut Deep (which would foretell the later more downbeat – and less noisy – material on their second 1987 album Darklands). There is also the irresistible buzzsaw pop of The Hardest Walk, Taste Of Cindy and Sowing Seeds – the latter a close relative to Just Like Honey (almost identical intro, bassline and similar structure), and a curious homage of sorts to Joy Division’s Heart And Soul (from Closer) in the frantic exorcism of In A Hole where Jim adopts the JD song’s refrain and does his own take on Ian Curtis’ existential groaning. I also love the way the intro to Something’s Wrong was nattily recycled into Happy When It Rains (a 1987 single which featured on their second album Darklands: so what if the Mary Chain are always accused of re-using their own riffs?). What is consistent is the fact that almost every track here is a shameless pop tune that either is or isn’t defiled accordingly with these great sheets of ear-scraping explosive noise.

True, the Mary Chain wore their teenage influences on their sleeves here and flaunted them proudly : a distillation of Ramones, Beach Boys, Phil Spector’s ‘wall of sound’ productions, Lou Reed / Velvets, Suicide, Stooges, MC5, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran – note how the majority were US acts, given their collective disdain for a lot of the UK pop music at the time. But other than the clear Joy Division influence too, they also took cues from German acts like Can (the band later covered their 1971 track Mushroom) and Einstürzende Neubauten (the unrelenting industrial squealing of the latter’s Das Schaben could well have inspired the Mary Chain’s deployment of screeching feedback). But no other UK chart act at the time – be they previous or present – came up with such a stirring hybrid of 60s pop and electrifying convulsive shock therapy noise assault that virtually initiated a whole new genre of music and a slew of imitators that came in its wake. Little wonder the music press were all falling over themselves at the time and proclaiming this band and Psychocandy the future of rock (‘n’ roll).

The lethal charm and insidious appeal of Psychocandy will forever endure, and there will always be those new to the band who will happily join ranks with the legions of faithful fans who have been there from the beginning all those years ago. Over the last 10 years we have seen Jim and William happily playing live shows all over to celebrate both the 30th – and now 40th – anniversaries of this remarkable record. Previously, in 2015, we saw the band play a rapturously received ‘hometown’ show at Glasgow Barrowlands which has been captured for posterity on a beautifully packaged hardback release ‘Jesus And Mary Chain: Psychocandy Live Barrowlands’ in both deluxe vinyl and CD formats. The entirety of the album was played, track by track, in order, as well as a smattering of other greatest hits.

Psychocandy remains one of those truly epochal recordings that many other bands will forever be declaring played a huge influential role for the decades to come. It’s also the yardstick that every single other subsequent Jesus And Mary Chain album will be accordingly judged, ranked, compared, dissected and dismissed against until the end of time, but that isn’t necessarily the point.

Of course initially, among all that excessive hype, I just didn’t get it, but given that aforementioned epiphany and awakening, I can now say with all honestly and no hint of shame that this band and their music was just waiting for me too to ultimately discover, embrace, and adore. I’m just so grateful that I did. 40 years on, I have not changed my view of them one iota. To some, especially any budding noisenik either setting out on their journey of discovery for gratuitous six string abuse, or those older more seasoned veterans who were there at those first notoriously incendiary JAMC North London Polytechnic live gigs, Psychocandy is not just any old record, but a fucking religion. It’s that simple.

Revisit Psychocandy in full via this YouTube link:

 

Psychocandy has once again been reissued as a limited 40th anniversary vinyl edition in the UK/EU via Blanco y Negro / Warner Records in an exclusive white and red splatter version, and also in the US via Third Man Records in an exclusive golden honey vinyl version. 

 

Reappraisal written by Martin Gray

Other articles by Martin can be found on his profile