Search - Jesus & Mary Chain :: Psycho Candy

Excellent, but not necessarily a classic

S. Shah | 08/06/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Psychocandy, in most of the critics' circles, is hailed as something of a classic. While it is excellent, it is not the JAMC's best album. It's been noted as being probably the best debut album to come out (at least in the 80s), and I think that is definitely true, but the band DID get better. They improved their sound and expanded beyond the crunching white noise and the soft, ballad-like sounds that Psychocandy offered. (I felt like this album was bi-polar. One time, wild and insane, and the soft and melancholy.)



Still, people who critique it or compare the sounds of JAMC to My Bloody Valentine and the Cure have it confused. JAMC INSPIRED Kevin Shields. Can't say the same about the Cure, but this album came out in 1985. Do the math, and study history. It helps (kind of like saying the Beatles learned from Led Zeppelin).



Also, remember: this was made 21 years ago. It has aged fairly well considering. Music from the 90s, and even within the last 10 years has not aged as successfully. That is one of the driving points of JAMC--their rock just seemed to be a bit ahead of its time.



I like the album, but I don't listen to is as much as, say, "Honey's Dead" or "Munki.""

Beautiful splintered pastiche of influences, but not without

RBubp | Wichita, ks | 02/17/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I didn't go back through all 70 reviews, but I haven't seen one yet that really gets it right on this album's depth and relevance. Yes, it's smashed and broken white-noise pop in the tradition of VU and, to a lesser extent, the Beach Boys. But listen more closely, and you realize their 'tude was not without relevance and depth: these guys had a record collection, and it included '60s girl groups (yes, the opening drum beat of "Just Like Honey" sounds just like "Leader of the Pack") and Bo Diddley ("The Living End, "Never Understand") in addition to the obligatory VU and post-punk sounds.



There wasn't much that put VU and '60s girl groups together back in the mid-'80s. or, well, ever. "Darklands" hints at a little Stones influence in places, and you know there was a Can cover on "Barbed Wire Kisses," but I lost interest after that and can't tell you where else in the back catalog they went. But The Cure? Joy Division? No, those were just forebears, not really related to the sound of this masterpiece that is at once a pastiche of its influences and a complete rupture from the interesting, but mostly harmless, skewed indie-pop of the day in Britain. Maybe it took some Scots to wake up the scene.



And they did wake it up. So much of the crud it influenced sounds so dated now, like 98% of that shoegazer business, but this sounds like it could have been made yesterday--the mark of a classic."