Track Listing

1. Just Like Honey
2. Living End
3. Taste the Floor
4. Hardest Walk
5. Cut Dead
6. In a Hole
7. Taste of Cindy
8. Some Candy Talking [*]
9. Never Understand
10. Inside Me
11. Sowing Seeds
12. My Little Underground
13. You Trip Me Up
14. Something's Wrong
15. It's So Hard

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34280 in Music
• Released on: 1991-02-12
• Number of discs: 1

From Amazon.co.uk
About a decade after its release, William Reid of the Mary Chain described Psychocandy as "one of the greatest records ever made". The remark is indicative of a) William Reid's chronic immodesty where his band are concerned and b) the unarguable truth. Every indie guitar group since that has tried to either lend portent to a sweet melody by drenching it in feedback or render a messy guitar wipe-out palatable by stringing a semblance of a tune through it--and that's all of them--got the idea from Psychocandy. Given that it has been reinvented, borrowed from and downright burgled continuously since its release, it is further testament to Psychocandy that it still sounds so fresh in its own right. William and Jim Reid displayed from the off an innate understanding of how best to balance their acute melodic sense with the racket that emerged from their guitar amplifiers. "Some Candy Talking" and "Just Like Honey" are just two of the tracks which, it seems reasonable to believe, would have drawn applause from both Brian Wilson and John Cage. --Andrew Mueller

Un Essentiel amazon.fr
Voilà ce qui se passe quand des ados écossais acnéiques et misanthropes se mettent en tête de mélanger Elvis, Can et les Sex Pistols. On a l'impression qu'un mauvais génie a déménagé les studios Sun sous la pluie de Glasgow. Les Jesus & Mary Chain sont des malheureux et fiers de l'être : "Never Understand", "Something's Wrong", "It's So Hard", autant de titres mornes et désespérés, débités sur un ton uniforme et noyés dans une reverb ultra-spectorienne. Cette voix blanche et pâle, magnifiée par l'écho, plane sur des guitares saturées à l'extrême. On a peut-être affaire à des mollassons mais pas à des gentils. Pédale fuzz bien enfoncée et basse turbo en avant. Le batteur minimaliste et tribal n'est autre que Bobby Gillespie (futur chanteur de Primal Scream) qui s'amuse à faire du Moe Tucker. Moe Tucker qui aurait été recrutée par les Stooges ! Avec le temps, ce premier album des Jesus & Mary Chain est devenu un disque culte, un classique du nihilisme adolescent, sale et méchant. Ou, si vous préférez, un grand disque de rock ! --Hubert Deshouse

Album Description
Scottish brothers Jim & William Reid's post-modern band's acclaimed debut album, originally released in 1985 & no longer available in the U.S. 15 tracks, including 'Just LikeHoney', 'Never Understand', 'My Little Underground', 'You Trip Me Up' and 'The Hardest Walk', plus an unmarked bonus track previously only included on the U.K. edition of the CD, 'Some Candy Talking'. 1986 Blanco Y Negro release.

Customer Reviews

Ominous beauty
Inspired by The Velvet Underground and perhaps also The Cure, The J&M Chain made feedback and distortion an integral part of their wall of sound, creating a unique and distinctive niche in rock music. It was in the way they did it - the distortion never sounds intrusive or discordant but complements the detached vocals for a cohesive music of eerie beauty.

In this crucial way the music differs from most of the output of the industrial genre, in that it has a trance-like, hypnotic quality. My favorite tracks on this seminal album include Just Like Honey, The Living End, The Hardest Walk, Sowing Seeds, My Little Underground and the sublime You Trip Me Up, a poignant blend of the tender and the ominous.

Psychocandy is a successful experiment in blending feedback with melody, creating atmospheric and always tuneful soundscapes that linger in the mind. Those who like Mercury Rev or My Bloody Valentine will love this classic album which takes rock music to places it's never been before.

Disappointing but good, good but disappointing
I guess perception flavours much and this is certainly the case with my feelings towards "Psychocandy". Yes, it's a great record, with the hardly-heard-before-or-since Beach Boys meet wall-of-feeback sound. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound that much like the live JAMC did when they first emerged, just before "Psychocandy" ("Taste The Floor" comes close). I never saw them live at this point but news reports (such as on the New Music in Canada, an inventive and now-gone TV show) gave an impression of what the JAMC were doing in concert: short, brutal concerts, sometimes involving physical assaults on the audience, featuring short, brutal songs with feedback and caveman drumming. I wanted the aural equivalent of that. "Pyschocandy" delivers something of note and interest but it doesn't quite deliver the live JAMC circa spring 1985.

....
I'll give credit to the Jesus and Mary Chain for coming up with something relatively novel in 1985. They combined early-60s melodies and song structures with crushing feedback, a la everybody's favorite name-check band, the Velvet Underground. OK, that's neat. Except that they repeated this concept song after song, again and again. In other words, this is a very repetitive album. Other than the memorable opening tune, Just Like Honey, the songs sound virtually the same. They did inspire My Bloody Valentine, one of my favorite bands, but MBV were much more creative in their shoegazing feedback, using different textures, whereas this album is just a sheet of noise.