Rocktrospectiva: The Heavily Influential "Psychocandy" Turns 40

Released on 18 November 1985 "Psychocandy" was the debut studio album by Scottish rock band the Jesus and Mary Chain. The album was considered a landmark recording: its combination of guitar feedback and noise with traditional pop melody and structure proved influential on the forthcoming shoegaze genre and alternative rock in general. The album spawned three singles "Never Understand", "You Trip Me Up" and "Just Like Honey". 

After quitting their jobs in 1980, brothers Jim and William Reid formed the Jesus and Mary Chain with bass player Douglas Hart. Taking inspiration from German industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, girl group the Shangri-Las, and the album The Velvet Underground & Nico, they bought a Portastudio multitrack recorder in 1983 when their father lost his job in a local factory and gave the brothers £300 from his redundancy money. The band recorded a demo tape containing the songs "Upside Down" and "Never Understand" which was heard by Glaswegian musician Bobby Gillespie, who in turn passed it on to his friend Alan McGee of Creation Records. McGee was impressed with the tape and invited the band to play at a Creation Records showcase event in London, becoming the band's manager shortly afterwards.

Following more London concerts, the Jesus and Mary Chain entered Alaska Studios in Waterloo, South London, and recorded their debut single, "Upside Down". Released by Creation Records in November 1984 and featuring a B-side produced by Slaughter Joe, "Upside Down" sold out its initial pressing and ended the year by being placed at number 37 in John Peel's Festive Fifty. After recruiting Gillespie as their drummer in late 1984, the Jesus and Mary Chain signed to the WEA subsidiary label Blanco y Negro, which had been established by Rough Trade founder Geoff Travis. 

The band entered Island Studios to record with engineer Stephen Street but the sessions proved to be fruitless and the band returned to Alaska Studios for the recording of their second single, "Never Understand". The single was released by Blanco y Negro in February 1985, and in March that year they began recording their debut album with engineer John Loder at Southern Studios in Wood Green, North London. Psychocandy was recorded in six weeks.

Psychocandy had fourteen tracks with a total running time of thirty-nine minutes. The music has been described as "bubblegum pop drowned in feedback, that fused "melody with obnoxious bursts of white noise, the sound was a moving away from the squealing feedback that characterised the band's early live shows and leaning more towards classic 60s pop. It was like a interesting blending between 1960s pop groups such as the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones, with rock bands as the Velvet Underground, the Stooges and Suicide. Lead vocals are handled by Jim Reid on this album, with the exception of "It's So Hard", sung by William Reid.

On release Psychocandy received favourable reviews describing the album as a great searing citadel of beauty whose wall of noise, once scaled, offers access to endless vistas of melody and emotion, over the years, the album has frequently appeared in "best ever" album lists, one of the most influentials cause it helped establish the style of distortion-laden fogginess that would eventually become the foundation for shoegaze.

 

Psychocandy Track List: 

 

1. Just Like Honey

2. The Living End

3. Taste The Floor

4. The Hardest Walk

5. Cut Dead

6. In A Hole

7. Taste Of Cindy 

8. Never Understand

9. Inside Me

10. Sowing Seeds

11. My Little Underground

12. You Trip Me Up

13. Something's Wrong

14. It's So Hard