Album: Psychocandy
Year: 1985
So in preparation for writing about the songs on Psychocandy, I read not one, but two books about The Jesus and Mary Chain. The first was the 33 1/3 entry on Psychocandy, which was terribly written, even if did impart some information, and the second was a better-written band biography.
And while I’m not sure I learned what I wanted to learn about the eternal mystery surrounding Psychocandy, both books insisted that their music had some roots in psychedelia, which I’d never really considered before.
Well, that’s not entirely true. When I listened to the 2015’s Live at The Barrowlands — itself a surprisingly excellent album — I was kinda shocked to discover that the basic drum pattern underneath “Something’s Wrong” is a classic psychedelic beat.
I had never noticed it before, because while “Something’s Wrong” starts with the drums, for the most part they’re buried at the center of the Earth.
You know those maps of the layers of soil in the Earth’s crust? And those other maps of the layers of Earth’s atmosphere? The sound of “Something’s Wrong” is as deep as those two maps combined, with Bobby Gillespie’s psychedelic snare rolls reduced to rubble under the sheer weight of the miles and miles and miles of William Reid’s guitars.
So. Many. Guitars. Every single one with the sustain set to infinity. And way up top, in the ionosphere, Jim Reid can only look around and sing:
Doo da dooooooo
Doo da doooooooo
Doo da doooooooo
Doo da doooooooo
He’s floating around the universe, all by himself. Not so much in his little underground, anymore. More like his massive overground, and there’s something wrong. Apparently when it comes to wanting to be all by yourself, be careful of what you ask for, you just might get it.
Another day goes by me
Another day of life without you
And I look around me
I feel so lonely, there’s no one hereNo one here beside me
No one here to help to see me through
To see me through
To see me through
‘Cause I need you
‘Cause I need you
But there’s no way to get back down. There are just too many guitars keeping him aloft. At one point, Gillespie dispenses with even hitting the snare at all, and at that point “Something’s Wrong” breaks out of Earth’s gravitational pull and just floats away toward the stars.
For the longest time, “Something’s Wrong” was my favorite song on Psychocandy, — and it still might be, give or take a “My Little Underground” — infinitely deep and infinitely sad and infinitely lovely, the sound of everything in the world going beautifully wrong because a relationship has ended, and all you can do is watch yourself drift away from the person you once thought was going to center you.
“Something’s Wrong”
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