Psychocandy

Certain Song #767: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “Something’s Wrong”

January 22, 2017 by Jim Connelly

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.

Certain Songs #766: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “My Little Underground”

January 21, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Psychocandy
Year: 1985

Ahh. “My Little Underground.” For 30 years, it’s been my second-favorite song on Psychocandy, just a skosh behind the song I’m posting about tomorrow, “Something’s Wrong.”

But, just as I realized that the one song I needed to see at the Replacements reunion was “Left of the Dial” and not the-song-I’ve-said-was-my-favorite-song-by-anyone-ever-for-years-and-years “Answering Machine,” as I started doing the run-up to writing about the songs on Psychocandy, I realized that “My Little Underground” might be my favorite song on it. Because it’s perfect. Just fucking perfect.

Certain Songs #765: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “Cut Dead”

January 20, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Psychocandy
Year: 1985

One of the things about Psychocandy was the pacing.

It wasn’t all song after song of buzzsaw guitars and pounding rhythms: there were also songs that laid up on the noise, mostly, and provided a bit of a respite from all of the noise, usually over on a variation of the Phil Spector “Be My Baby” beat.

The most famous example of these songs was “Just Like Honey,” — which kicked off the whole album — but on the second side, the etherial “Sowing Seeds” took also this approach (and had Jim Reid confessing that he wanted peace, like he was a fucking hippie or something), but the most gorgeous of all was the lighter-than-air “Cut Dead,” which cut me to the core, both musically and lyrically.

Certain Songs #764: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “The Hardest Walk”

January 19, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Psychocandy
Year: 1985

To this day, I don’t know if seeing The Jesus and Mary Chain play live just a couple of months after Psychocandy came out helped or hurt my love of the album.

After all, we already knew that part of their shtick at the time was to play incredibly short, auto-destruct sets, and so — unlike, say, seeing R.E.M. on the Pagentry tour, which was just a few months later — heading up to to San Francisco to see The Jesus and Mary Chain probably wasn’t going to deepen my understanding of Psychocandy, which was clearly a studio creation anyways.

Certain Songs #763: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “Just Like Honey”

January 18, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Psychocandy
Year: 1985

“Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this!!”
— Tony Soprano

While Psychocandy came out in the U.K. in November, 1985, it didn’t come out here in the colonies until January of 1986, which was when I ended up getting it.

For me, it was easily the most anticipated debut album since The Smiths or maybe going back to Murmur! Yeah, OK. Back then, there were a lot of highly-anticipated debut albums, and honestly, Psychocandy was just another one — an artist would put out a couple of amazing singles, even an EP, and so by the time the album came out, there was a fan base just salivating for a whole album of chewy goodness — so while I was definitely looking forward to it, I probably wasn’t dying for it.

Certain Songs #762: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “You Trip Me Up”

January 17, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album Psychocandy
Year: 1985

in the summer of 1985, the layout of our condo at the end of the Ikeway had Kirk’s room at the end of the hallway that connected the bedrooms to the living room and kitchen area. This was important because while all three of us — Kirk, Tim and I — had our own stereo systems, none of us had enough money to buy a communal stereo system for the front part of the condo.

This meant that Kirk’s stereo was the defacto sound system for our entire place, but of course, in order to hear anything in the front room, it had to be turned up LOUD, so that the sound would travel down the funnel of the hallway and explode into the living room.

As you can imagine, none of us minded this, given that 30+ years later, we’re still being asked by our respective spouses if we could turn the music down to a normal volume. Which of course it’s already at, said normal volume being LOUD.

Certain Songs #761: The Jesus and Mary Chain – “Never Understand”

January 16, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Psychocandy
Year: 1985

The things you remember, right? Here’s one: at some point in the early 1980s, probably after listening to one of the first two Psychedelic Furs albums, I remember thinking that it would cool if somebody could somehow get the drone of a blow dryer in a song. Not as some kind of art noise like Einstürzende Neubauten were doing, but in tune, as a quintessential part of a pop song.

Well, apparently William & Jim Reid had the same kind of idea, and they used it to create a debut album that ranks in my top 5 all-time favorite albums by anyone, Psychocandy.