Day 97: The Jesus and Mary Chain – Psychocandy

Album cover courtesy of Blanco y Negro Records

I’m really struggling to find any non-music audio content that I want to listen to these days. I’m sure there are good podcasts out there, you just need to wade through a sea of garbage before you find something that’s actually worth your time. Trying to find a new podcast always makes me feel a touch of ennui because I look at the thousands of people talking about thousands of things and I’m just not interested in any of them, but to be fair, that’s probably because I’m overthinking the process of choosing a podcast.

The good part about that is that as a result, I’m gravitating towards my one true goal: only being entertained by forms of entertainment that existed before 1999. Films? Yes. Books, magazines, articles? Absolutely. Music, obviously. But Instagram reels, podcasts, social media feeds? Get thee behind me, Satan, that’s bad for my mental health.

One thing I’ve rediscovered through this is that I love listening to radio shows. There’s such a routine to it and it somehow also feels like genuine connection to other people somewhere out there. It’s top-tier for discovering new music and you (hopefully, depending on the show) get to hear someone talk passionately about whatever songs they’re playing. I’ve been listening to Henry Rollins’ show on KCRW, and he played a song by the Jesus and Mary Chain, who I’d still never listened to, despite living in Scotland for a fairly long chunk of time, at least by my standards.

The Jesus and Mary Chain were formed in 1983 in East Kilbride by brothers Jim and William Reid, along with bassist Douglas Hart and drummer Murray Dalglish. Dalglish left the band and was replaced by Bobby Gillespie, who left the band after the release of their debut album to put his full attention into his band, Primal Scream.

The Reid brothers were inspired to start their band for the simple reason that they thought that everything they heard on the radio at the time was terrible:

[I]t was the crap coming out of the radio that made us want to be in a band more than anything else, because it was like, “Why is everything we hear so fucking awful?” That was the main driving force: how bad things were.

They had the idea to take inspiration from ‘60s pop groups like the Shangri-Las, the Beach Boys and the Monkees, but pair the sweetness and polish of that with a fuzzy, loud and distorted post punk sound. They released their debut album Psychocandy in 1985 to much critical acclaim, having previously become known for doing 20-minute gigs where they stand with their backs to the audience, the likes of which enamoured NME critics so much that they called them the best band in the world before they’d even released an album.

You can hear Velvet Underground and Iggy and the Stooges as clear influences on the record, but the band also reminds me of Suicide, another one of my favourites that I’ve discovered in the course of this project. It’s also another band I discovered through Henry Rollins. The distorted sound and influences from ‘50s and ‘60s pop is one factor, but the other one is that the Jesus and Mary Chain, like Suicide, incited riots. People didn’t understand their music and they didn’t want to try, so they would go to their gigs to throw bottles and tear the stage apart.

Listening to this album is like the opposite experience to the loneliness of trying to find a podcast: I feel a bit more like a person after hearing it. It feels like something I can find a connection to. It’s a very strange listening experience, but it also feels like just the thing that I’ve been missing. It’s unique, it’s aggressive, it’s almost aggravating to listen to a few times, but it’s also somehow comforting and warm and beautiful, without always seeming like it’s trying to be. I love “The Living End” and “In a Hole” but honestly, quite a few on that record could go into a list of my favourite things I’ve heard so far.

This is among my most fawning reviews, but it’s still not a 10. It’s a very, very strong 9.5/10. What can I say, I didn’t have as strong a physical reaction to it as I did mentally and I think that’s the rule for a 10, and I’m nothing if not a stickler. This record is still going into my pile of best things I’ve discovered this year.