Home > Music > The Jesus and Mary Chain > Discography

The Jesus and Mary Chain
Psychocandy
Release Date: 1985 11 zz
Running Time: 42:15
Label: Blanco Y Negro

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's 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 easygoing 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. Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

Tracks:

	Title	Composer	Time
1	Just Like Honey	Reid, Reid	3:01
2	Living End	Reid, Reid	2:15
3	Taste the Floor	Reid, Reid	2:57
4	Hardest Walk	Reid, Reid	2:39
5	Cut Dead	Reid, Reid	2:45
6	In a Hole	Reid, Reid	3:02
7	Taste of Cindy	Reid, Reid	1:42
8	Never Understand	Reid, Reid	2:58
9	Inside Me	Reid, Reid	3:09
10	Sowing Seeds	Reid, Reid	2:50
11	My Little Underground	Reid, Reid	2:31
12	You Trip Me Up	Reid, Reid	2:26
13	Something's Wrong	Reid, Reid	4:02
14	It's So Hard	Reid, Reid	2:38

Releases:

Year	Type	Label
2006	CD	Blanco Y Negro
1985	CD	Blanco y Negro/Warner Bros.
1990	CD	Blanco y Negro/Warner Bros.
2008	CD	Rhino
2008	CD	WEA Japan
1985	CS	Blanco y Negro/Warner Bros.
1990	LP	Blanco y Negro/Warner Bros.
2004	LP	Rhino/ADA