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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Summary.
An interesting variation on the psychedelic revival of the 1980s
came out of Scotland when
Jesus And Mary Chain coined
"feedback-pop". The idea was quite simple and certainly not new:
take the Velvet Underground's White Light White Heat and add
a catchy melody, or take
Phil Spector's "wall of sound" and add a layer of guitar noise.
Massive distortions, coupled with nihilistic ethos borrowed from the
Sex Pistols, bestowed on Psychocandy (1985) a funereal mood.
Its spectral, acid, abrasive lullabies lasted only one season, though.
The much lighter Darklands (1987) was a collection of melancholy
ballads, and Automatic (1989), while more cohesive, professional and
eclectic than anything they had done before, was basically dance-music, no
matter how skewed, and Honey's Dad (1992) was even laid-back.
Full bio.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Scotland's Jesus And Mary Chain, led by brothers Jim (vocals) and William (guitar) Reid, burst onto the scene in the 1980s with a sound that was at once melodic and noisy, drawing on the lessons of the Sister Ray by the Velvet Underground but with an added touch of anguish (and perhaps a perversion of Phil Spector’s "wall of sound"), creating a revolution of global proportions. It was with them that the "shoegazer" movement was born, arguably the most important in Britain after punk rock.
By injecting massive doses of distortion, the Jesus And Mary Chain became the sharpest innovators of melodic pop. Later, the band would revert to the very pop they had helped make obsolete. In a sense, however, the Mary Chain thus fulfilled their mission, which had been to bring even the heresy of the Sex Pistols back into the pop fold.
The group was formed in Scotland and debuted with the singles Upside Down (1984), Never Understand (1985), You Trip Me Up (1985), and Just Like Honey (1985). Their style was consistent: simple chords, catchy choruses, and familiar riffs were upended by the brazen feedback of the guitar and immersed in hallucinatory, psychedelic atmospheres. Their legend was fueled by a series of live performances under the influence of alcohol and drugs, as well as other scandalous antics.
Psychocandy (Reprise, 1985) is a funeral of an album, beginning from the roots of punk rock (the two-chord simplicity of the Ramones, the anarchic fury of the Sex Pistols, the existential desolation of Joy Division) to arrive at a new paradigm of musical rebellion. The tracks range from spectral ballads of surreal tenderness, reminiscent of Nico (Just Like Honey, You Trip Me Up, Hardest Walk), to tribal voodoobilly soaked in hyper-abrasive, epileptic “acid” bursts à la Suicide (Living End, Never Understand, In A Hole), to chanting melodies enveloped in the hallucinatory trance of the Doors (Taste The Floor), and unrestrained assaults on innocent bubblegum choruses (My Little Underground).
With a strong sense of melody (bordering on self-indulgent glam rock) and cadence (epic, apocalyptic, martial, cosmic), the Reid brothers erect devastating generational anthems. Lugubrious and exhausting, their sound represents the extreme experience of gothic and psychedelic music. Because of the piercing feedback, their psychedelia is among the most neurotic ever. The vocals, warm and whispered, float weightlessly within the heated filigree of intense delirium tremens.
By combining the nihilistic iconography of the Sex Pistols with the surrealist aesthetic of psychedelia, the Jesus And Mary Chain reached a form of revival attuned to the mood of the times while simultaneously emulating the equally paranoid primitivism of the Velvet Underground. Fatalistic and nihilistic, their “feedback-pop” updates power pop according to the perverse rituals of industrial music.
The 1986 EP, Some Candy Talking, shows the first signs of fatigue, as if the introspective emotion of the later Velvet Underground were paired with the extroverted noisiness of the earlier ones. Darklands (Blanco Y Negro, 1987) was the scandalous landmark. The hallucinatory violence of their early work is completely removed, and the band retreats to a form of melancholic and somewhat ecstatic balladry. Against the distortions and cacophonies, this album offers a sparse and essential style that traces the paths of softer decadence (Darklands, Fall, Down On Me), occasionally veering into nightmare-like chants (Nine Million Rainy Days), while revealing a keen interest in danceable tracks (April Skies and especially Happy When It Rains, one of their masterpieces). William Reid confirms himself as a master of the most overused rock chord progressions, while Jim Reid endlessly repeats the simplest pop choruses. Heralded by the T. Rex-style boogie of Sidewalking, the third album, Automatic (Blanco Y Negro, 1989), continues the progression, even brushing against danceable rhythms (Between Planets, Head On). The epic cadences and abrasive violence of their first work are now entirely subordinated to a languidly and melodically decadent Lou Reed-like sound (Here Comes Alice, Half Way To Crazy), tinged with driving psychobilly at “train-like” tempo (Coast To Coast) and majestic “metallic” cadences (Uv Ray, Gimme Hell), but also capable of indulging in a jump blues torn apart by acute neuroses (Blues From A Gun) and emulating surf band stylings (Take It). The ghost of the Velvet Underground hovers more than ever over the Mary Chain’s castle of horrors, and Jim Reid now sings like a clone of the most heroin-addled Reed.
The Jesus And Mary Chain have by now abandoned the “feedback-pop” they had invented to its fate.
In 1990, the even weaker Rollercoaster cast a shadow over the band’s future. The album Honey's Dad (Blanco Y Negro, 1992) sounds decidedly “light,” relaxed, and almost ironic compared to their early sound. The album emphasized the danceability of their music with a skillful blend of T. Rex and the Stone Roses (Reverence), almost completely stifling psychedelic excursions in atmospheric ballads (Teenage Lust), camouflaging the last traces of the Stooges in careful arrangements for mass consumption (Far Gone And Out, perhaps the album’s masterpiece), carefully hiding the remnants of punk rock in the frenetic tambourine rhythms that were fashionable in clubs, and even resurrecting girl-group civilizations on the ruins of their feedback (Almost Gold references the Ronettes) and bubblegum pop (Sugar Ray). In the end, only the melodies remain, and the album mostly leaves an impression of repetitiveness. Stoned & Dethroned (Blanco Y Negro, 1994) is finally an easy-listening album. By giving up on cramming sound into the songs, the band discovers the pleasure of leaving them ruthlessly bare. The revival of simplicity, with bass and acoustic guitar finally co-starring in the arrangements, benefits Sometimes Always, but in general exposes the compositional shortcomings of the leaders. 1995 brought only the single Hate Rock And Roll, which is nevertheless one of their best songs of the later years.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
After a four-year hiatus, the Jesus And Mary Chain returned in fine form with
Munki (Creation, 1998), that arches back to the vitriolic style of their
beginnings with Cracking Up
(a reworking of Devo's Mongoloid), with
the dirty boogie of Virtually Unreal, with the
shoegazing Man On The Moon, with the rave-up of
Supertramp (that borrows from the Beatles' Tomorrow Never Knows).
Approaching their forties, the Reid brothers look back in anger and deliver
their most personal statement yet, a song cycle that begins with
I Love Rock'N'Roll and ends with
I Hate Rock'N'Roll (no Hollywood-style happy ending, sorry).
The majestic ballad
Never Understood is a remnant of Stoned & Dethroned and the
trip-hop of Perfume (Hope Sandoval
on vocals) broadens their horizons.
21 Singles (Rhino, 2002) is a career anthology.
Jesus And The Mary Chain reunited at the Coachella festival in 2007.
The Power Of Negative Thinking (2008) collects B-sides and rarities.
They re-reunited for Damage and Joy (2017),
their first studio album in 19 years,
and then re-re-reunited for
Glasgow Eyes (2024).
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