A Ringing Sound: The Jesus and Mary Chain on Psychocandy

The group knew, at the time, that they had made a great record. “We were quietly confident about it,” Jim says. “At the time, a lot of the music press had written the band off. Had the album not been any good, that would’ve been it for the band—people were sharpening the knives.”

It would’ve been easy to write the thing off as a cacophonous mess of white noise and failed stabs at experimentation, if it weren’t for the superbly executed songs that comprise Psychocandy. Ea

ch track was a unique ride through pop song structure, and there wasn’t a space-filler to be found. “We wanted to make an album where every track could’ve been a single,” Jim says. “A lot of people who were ready to stick the boot in couldn’t because we delivered the goods.”

Drenched in sonic inventiveness, Psychocandy is an album rife with psychic shakeups of hallowed musical convention. The tracks on Psychocandy gleefully compress disparate elements, such as noisy guitar feedback, blown-out fuzz, hushed vocals and iconic tropes like Hal Blaine’s drumbeat into short, melodic pop songs. Tracks like “The Living End” and “In a Hole” are sonic, feedback-driven screwdrivers that looked ahead to the nascent industrial scene, while tracks like “Just Like Honey,” “Sowing Seeds” and “Something’s Wrong” were touchstones of the budding shoegaze movement. Underpinning each track is the band’s preference for simple, guitar-based melodies and the monosyllabic language of rock n’ roll.

McGee, who had heard many of the tracks through the live shows and demos, certifies the album’s success. “I think they did a good job,” he says. “The fact that there’s thousands of people wanting to come see them play all over the world 30 years later proves that it’s a good album.”

When asked if he thought that album was going to be influential, Jim says, “That was the idea. We wanted to make a record that was going to be around for a while. At that time, we were listening to stuff from 20 to 30 years before us, and we kind of thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if, 27 years from now, there were bands in Texas that were making music because of Psychocandy?’” Thirty years on, it’s unquestionable that there are volumes of bands not just in the U.S. or UK, but around the world, who look to The Mary Chain as the touchstone for that ringing sound of noisy rock n’ roll.

The Jesus and Mary Chain embarked on a UK tour in the fall of 2014, playing Psychocandy in its entirety and are taking the tour Stateside throughout May. Catch them at Austin Psych Fest on May 9, at the Ogden Theatre in Denver on May 11 or anywhere else on the tour. Find out more about the band’s current happenings at thejesusandmarychain.uk.com.