The Jesus And Mary Chain
DualDiscs (Rhino/U.S.)
Music Sound: B Extras: C
Psychocandy: A
Automatic: B-
Honey’s Dead: A-
Stoned & Dethroned: A-
In the
summer of 1992, that long hot idyll between my senior year of high school and
my first year at the university, I sweated in the basement of the public
library, palled around with old friends before they left town for colleges
beyond the Pittsburgh city limits, and re-ignited a sweet love affair I thought
over months earlier. The other memorable
event of that particular summer was attending the second installment of the
Lollapalooza touring music festival. On the bill: Ice Cube, The Red Hot Chili
Peppers, Ministry, Pearl Jam, and the band that I was especially eager to see The Jesus And Mary Chain.
I don’t
remember exactly how long I waited, reclining on that sweltering hillside, the
bright sun baking us and the sky utterly clear above us. My arms around my girlfriend, the aroma of
gyros wafting up from the food tents, and the two of us sharing exorbitantly
priced bottles of water as the heat and humidity went to work on us I
occasionally cursed Perry Farrel under my breath for organizing this damn
thing.
I have a
thing about the outdoors – I don’t particularly like ‘em. Sure as a kid I enjoyed nothing so much as
running around outside playing and having a good time, laughing in the
elements, my legs pumping, arms going, breathing deep of the good free air but
as I’ve gotten older, though, the great outdoors has become something I can do
without. Certainly a little goes a long
way for me and spending the entire day melting on a barren hillside, no matter
how great the bands may have been, was a difficult situation to get through. The pleasant and very pretty company definitely
helped.
As
uncomfortable as I was, though, Jim and William Reid of The Jesus And Mary Chain almost overwhelmed by the giant stage and
the mercilessly piercing sunlight that left no shadow in which they could hide
were even more outmatched by the summer.
I actually felt bad for the guys and forgave their abrupt set that
couldn’t have lasted more than twenty-five minutes. Of all the bands on that tour JAMC was who I was there to see and of
all those bands none were as out of place.
So I couldn’t hold the brevity of their set against them. Watching them play their special midnight
brand of rock’n’roll to that wide-eyed and sun-kissed crowd of neo-hippies and
frat boys I actually found myself willing them to make a quick escape. Run
boys, run. No good will come of this. Run!
JAMC records have been embarrassingly
out of print in the U.S. for years, but now thanks to Rhino (of course) their
oeuvre has been overhauled and re-issued in appropriately respectful
fashion. Each disc has been remastered
and includes three of-their-time videos.
Psychocandy bursts out of the gate with early
Velvet Underground dissonance and sculpted guitar feedback swirled assuredly in
the doom and gloom with a spoonful of sugar pop of the Shangri-las. Jim Reid’s vocals are all threat and regret
while William’s guitar lines shift from sharp stabs to buzzsaw shredding. The core of their sound is present here from
the first track and listening to this record there is no way anyone could
imagine them on a big empty stage shot through with white sunlight.
Automatic was their third record following
the sharp and spiky Darklands. Automatic betrays a certain tired
lassitude. There are still some good
songs here but the record feels kind of padded.
There’s no real snap here. This is brought into very clear perspective
by the Pixies cover of Head On which
turned that JAMC highlight into a
real barnburner. As good as the song is
here it just never scales the heights it could have. Not a bad record by any means but you feel
like the band is running in place on this one.
All of
that quickly became trivial and meaningless with Honey’s Dead. This is the
first JAMC album I ever bought and
it was because of it that I was on that hill in the dead of summer. These are the songs I had come to hear. But Reverence
and Teenage Lust were never meant
for the bright light of day. In fact no JAMC song was meant to be heard by any
other light than that of the red neon of a sex shop window at two in the
morning. The album is so fierce, so sickly
threatening and aberrant yet at the same time it’s still beautiful pop music.
With Stoned & Dethroned JAMC changed the
rules of their game. Here was a JAMC album where the acoustic guitar
was the centerpiece. Not only that, but
guest vocalists Shane Macgowan and Hope Sandoval join in. Sandoval’s
contribution in particular is a highlight to this record. Stoned & Dethroned was the final peak of JAMC’s career. A great album
filled with great pop songs.
After
this they would release tired revisitations to their earlier classic sound to
no real avail. Rhino has reissued the
crème de la crème of JAMC in solid
MLP 96kHz/24bit 2.0 Stereo-only editions on top of solid CD sound versions and
America is all the better for their doing it.
- Kristofer Collins
Kristofer
Collins is the owner of Desolation Row CDs in Pittsburgh, PA and an editor at
The New Yinzer. He can be contacted at desolationrowcds@hotmail.com
