Psychocandy (1985)

Psychocandy is the debut studio album by Scottish rock band the Jesus and Mary Chain. It was released on 18 November 1985 by Blanco y Negro Records. The album is 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 reached No. 31 on the UK Albums Chart and was preceded by three charting 1985 singles: "Never Understand", "You Trip Me Up", and "Just Like Honey". The band moved away from its abrasive sound with their follow-up album, 1987's Darklands.

Background and recording

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 and totalled £17,000 in recording and production costs.

Music and lyrics

Psychocandy contains 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." Dan Weiss of Paste magazine said the album "sounded like the 1910 Fruitgum Company and Joy Division arm-wrestling in a sheet metal factory, with slabs of white noise guarding candy-toy melodies the Reid Brothers didn't want you to get sick of too quickly." Radio X characterized the sound as "moving away from the squealing feedback that characterised [the band's] early live shows and leaning more towards classic 60s pop."

Critics have noted the influence of classic 1960s pop groups such as the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones alongside the work of rock bands the Velvet Underground, the Stooges and Suicide on the album.

Lead vocals are handled by Jim Reid on this album, with the exception of "It's So Hard", sung by William Reid.

Release

The album includes the singles "Never Understand", "You Trip Me Up" and "Just Like Honey". Following reissue on CD in August 1986, the bonus track "Some Candy Talking", which was originally released on the namesake EP, was included on the album, only on the UK Blanco y Negro CDs released in 1986 and 1997; in the US, it was released on CD by Reprise in 1986 and American Recordings in 1993 without the bonus track. In 2006, the album was remastered and released in DualDisc format without "Some Candy Talking" to conform with the original playlist. In 2011, it was re-released (along with the other five studio albums) by Edsel in collaboration with Rhino as a two-CD set with extra tracks (singles, B-sides, demos and John Peel Sessions) and a DVD (NTSC, all-region).

Reception and legacy

On release Psychocandy received favourable reviews. Writing for NME, Andy Gill described the album as "a great searing citadel of beauty whose wall of noise, once scaled, offers access to endless vistas of melody and emotion", while William Shaw of Smash Hits called it "a wonderful LP which should bring the Scottish brats the success they've missed out on so far". Tim Holmes of Rolling Stone praised the band as "a perfect recombinant of every Edge City outlaw ethic ever espoused in rock." In the end of year-roundups, the album placed at number two in NME's list of best albums of 1985, number 3 in The Face, and number 5 in Melody Maker.