In many ways, Psychocandy is the purest example of noise-pop that exists. Noise-pop, that wonderful concept of combining sweet melody and bitter sound to produce the aural equivalent of either very aggressive sex or being beaten up in slow motion, depending on the band. The Jesus And Mary Chain are definitely of the former school.
One of the first things you’ll notice is the effortless, effortless cool that this band exudes. What is remarkable is that their whole Lou Reed-sunglasses-leather-Jack Daniels image is so contrived, and yet you can’t imagine that the Reid brothers could ever sing anything else when they drawl “I get ahead on my motorbike, I feel so quick in my leather boots.”
_Psychocandy_ isn’t heavy – the opposite in fact, in terms of sound. The noise, though cavernous thanks to recorded-in-a-cave levels of reverb, is trebly and harsh, putting off many of the Nirvana fans who come across the album – there’s no precedent here apart from among the avant-garde. The noise here has little to do with punk; the album sparks with energy, but it isn’t jump-up-and-down energy, it’s simply a deep, forboding sense of joy/hatred (and isn’t the confusion between joy and hatred the central tenet of all good music? Yes.) To cap it all off, Gillespie’s style on the kit here has accurately been described as “hit the drums then hit them again”, retard-caveman beats that go perfectly with the Velvet Underground/Beach Boys tunes.
Barbed wire kisses indeed. —Ignorantium
