extracted from "Totally Shuffled: A Year of Listening to Music on a broken iPod"
Day 115
April 24th
The Jesus & Mary Chain-You Trip Me
Up-Pyschocandy
Looking back on
this album, and listening to it again for the first time in about five years, I
find myself astonished at the legendary status that has been bestowed upon it.
Virtually from its release until the present day it’s been seen as a classic,
groundbreaking record. And I am as guilty as anyone for falling into the hype
right from the start.
Back in 1985
when this album was issued, all new records were released on a Monday, just to
have the chance to make as many sales as possible before the charts came out on
Sunday. I’m not sure if this is the case now because it’s a long long time
since I went out and bought a physical record, but I guess that it’s not
changed.
There had been
so much about Jesus and Mary Chain the music weeklies even before they’d
released anything that we’d all been led to believe it was the second coming. A
perfect match apparently between Spector-ish Wall of Sound, the darkness of The Velvet Underground, The
Beach Boys-put in any pop cultural reference that was hip enough, in disparate
groups of three, and there you’d have it. It was what we’d all been waiting for
since punk. The next big thing, and after so many false dawns, this was the
real thing. Or so we were all told. The reviews of the album, on the Thursday
before it was released, in NME, Melody Maker and Sounds were so over-the-top
and effusive that you just knew it had to be perfect. There wasn’t a dissenting
voice amongst the critics and they were so equally fulsome in their praise it
was if there a competition for superlatives had been launched. The implication
was that The Jesus and Mary Chain were in a direct line of lineage descended
from Elvis, The Beatles and the Sex Pistols.
All this led me
to getting up early on the Monday morning of the release day in 1985 and
getting into HMV at 9.00 a.m. By 9.20 I was back on the 75 bus back home and at
10 ish I must’ve been brewing up whilst it blasted out of the plastic speakers
on my cheap hi-fi. I was hooked and wholly convinced. The sleeve art was cool
and the inner bag was a hip collage of black and white photos of the band
looking suitably moody and wasted. When, at the end of the year, not only did
it make number one in critics’ polls for album of the year, but when in the
once-every-decade poll of all the NME writers’ best albums of all time, it came
in third, I knew that this was destined to be a classic of all time. Every time
I made a mix tape I made sure that there was a track from this album was on
it-it was an unwritten rule.
The second Jesus
and Mary Chain album, “Darklands”, then came out in 1987, and although I got it
I’m sure I didn’t rush down on the day of release. It was good, but I knew
instinctively that there was something missing when compared to first album.
There seemed to be a law of diminishing returns with each album- I got “Automatic”,
their third, in 1989 but by the time they issued “Honey’s Dead” I couldn’t be
bothered anymore. At least “Pyschocandy” was a stone-cold classic, and I could
look back on to those halcyon days of the mid- eighties with rose- tinted nostalgia.
Until today
actually. Today was the first time that I have listened to the album all the
way through for about five years. Hindsight being a wonderful thing etc and as
I feel a bit guilty and disloyal slating a record that I previously loved, all
I can say is that I think that I should wait at least another five years before
it troubles my ears again. Hope those five years really drag.
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