The Jesus And Mary Chain Darklands Deluxe Edition Bonus DVD 2011
Hien Mondesir
And so heralds the starting point for The Jesus & Mary Chain, a band totally out of place upon their arrival in 1984 yet whose influence and legacy has lived on for three decades since. Indeed, as an impressionable schoolboy in the dead end mining town of Mansfield during the mid-Eighties, hearing the ear-splitting squall of 'You Trip Me Up' sounded like nothing else on earth. Deadpan vocals colliding with a wall of feedback and white noise seemed a million miles away from the synthetic pop of Nik Kershaw and King that filled the airwaves at the time. Despite my initial response being "Is it really meant to sound like that?" it didn't take long to become hooked and ultimately shape my musical palette for the next 26 years. The fractious relationship between brothers Jim and William Reid only served to make The Mary Chain even more real than the sea of poseurs they were swimming against.
The Jesus And Mary Chain Darklands Deluxe Edition Bonus DVD 2011
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Even now in 2011, debut album Psychocandy still sounds as relevant and shocking as it did when first issued in November 1985. Argue the point if you wish but it would be inconceivable to imagine genres such as shoegaze, post-rock, C86 or indeed many of the more leftfield, guitar-based independent sub-genres even existing without Psychocandy paving the way. Imagine a world without My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream, Mogwai, Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Nine Inch Nails and many more whose names could be added to that list as we know and admire them? Exactly, impossible to contemplate isn't it. What's more, instead of sticking to the unique formula they created on that initial masterpiece, The Mary Chain evolved with every subsequent release. Some may claim they'd run out of ideas and more probably patience by the time 1998's Munki rang the death knell. Nevertheless, for 14 years they proudly raised two fingers at the mainstream, infiltrating it at their leisure throughout. How many top ten singles can you name that open with the immortal line "I wanna die like Jesus Christ, I wanna die on a bed of spikes"? Uncompromising until the end, if ever a band deserved the remastered box set treatment with added warts and all it would be East Kilbride's finest.
Over the next three weeks, starting with Psychocandy and Darklands on September 26th and finishing with Stoned And Dethroned and Munki on October 10th, each of their six albums is to be re-issued as a triple CD/DVD deluxe box set containing remastered versions, singles and b-sides, demo recordings, live concerts, television appearances and numerous rare and unreleased songs complete with extensive booklets containing interviews with band members, lyric sheets and rare photographs and memorabilia. Here, DiS reviews and reflects on each re-issue.
If hearing Never Mind The Bollocks for the first time acted as some kind of musical awakening, then Psychocandy represents my official Groundhog Day. Christmas Day in 1985 would be where lines were drawn, old cassettes and vinyl cast aside, and pretty much everything else discarded as being irrelevant. From the opening echoes of 'Just Like Honey' to the crushing finale that is 'It's So Hard', every single solitary part of Psychocandy's 14 piece jigsaw signified a new dawn in the way so-called alternative, independent or experimental bands (*delete where appropriate) would approach music in the future. Sure enough, the likes of Cabaret Voltaire, Einsturzende Neubaten and Throbbing Gristle had already crossed previously forbidden boundaries, but here was a band not afraid to fuse melody with obnoxious bursts of white noise. Unafraid of publicly confessing an unashamed love of Phil Spector and Motown alongside more obvious influences like The Velvet Underground. Let's not forget back in the mid-Eighties you had to belong to a faction. You had to be a skinhead, or a punk, or a mod, or a rocker, or a futurist, or a soul boy. There was no in-between. In the smalltown I grew up in any fusion between sub-genres was deemed unacceptable, the actions of a 'poseur'. So for a band to come along and make music completely alien to anything heard before while stating their inspiration had come from opposite ends of the musical spectrum was just totally flooring.
It goes without saying that alongside The Head On The Door and Meat Is Murder, Psychocandy was one of the few highlights in what was an especially bleak year for UK music. Simmering with vitriol, brutality and an underlying subtlety and substance few could comprehend, there isn't a moment on the entire album where the skip button takes precedence over the record's contents. Lyrically ambiguous but ultimately dark in sentiment, the likes of 'The Living End' and 'Taste The Floor' could have been about anything you wanted them to be, the latter's admission that "The sun don't shine, and all the stars don't shine, and all the walls fall down, and all the fish get drowned" making even Morrissey seem like a stand-up comedian in comparison.
What's more, every song on Psychocandy could quite easily have been released as a single in its own right. The three that were, 'Never Understand', 'You Trip Me Up' and 'Just Like Honey' all stand up today as timeless, seminal masterpieces. That debut single 'Upside Down' never made the cut for Psychocandy probably tells its own story, as great a 45 that it was. Reading through the accompanying 32-page booklet bass player Douglas Hart reveals the main inspiration for the production on Psychocandy was Norman Whitfield, who worked on a lot of classic Marvin Gaye and Temptations records. You probably can't hear it through all the distortion and feedback, but on the record's more laidback offerings like 'Cut Dead' and 'Sowing Seeds' the Mary Chain embrace melody and deliver exquisitely.
While every home should own at least one copy of Psychocandy already, the accompanying bonus discs offer another whopping 29 songs, most notably the 'Upside Down' single and its b-side, the Mary Chain's incendiary cover of Syd Barrett's 'Vegetable Man' along with long lost demo and one-time centre of tabloid controversy 'Jesus Fuck'. Elsewhere, three John Peel radio sessions taken over a 12-month period between October 1984 and 1985 evidently document the band's development, hinting at where their next musical excursion is heading as new songs 'Some Candy Talking' and 'Psychocandy' sit side-by-side with a stripped down acoustic jaunt through 'You Trip Me Up'.
Meanwhile, the DVD collects promo videos for the three singles alongside television appearances from The Old Grey Whistle Test, The Tube and a Belgian music programme entitled VRT, which is more notable for Jim Reid arguing with the presenter over his apparent hatred of all things Joy Division and drummer-at-the-time Bobby Gillespie getting it on with his then-girlfriend in the background. As a stand alone entity, Psychocandy remains flawless. With the added extras contained in the Deluxe Edition, its an essential purchase for anyone remotely interested in The Jesus & Mary Chain or just the development of independent guitar music in general. (10).
Following up such perfection as Psychocandy was never going to be easy. "We had a choice of whether to make Psychocandy 2 or try another thing...A lot was getting written about the noise element of our music and not enough about the actual songs underneath the noise, so we decided to showcase the songs rather than the guitars", said Jim Reid to DiS recently. While not an entirely unfeasible shape shift from its predecessor's barbed wire halo of noise and disaffection, Darklands still proved a shock to the system for those who'd dismissed the Mary Chain as a band bereft of any musical talent while immersed in the shock tactics of the Sex Pistols before them. It probably seems unthinkable now but at the time of the band's arrival on the scene they often found themselves compared to the Pistols.
While this record heralded a more mellow, delicate approach than Psychocandy, it's also notable for being the album which brought the songwriting and vocal talents of William Reid to the forefront. Having spent the majority of their early period with his back to the audience detuning guitars and conjuring up an array of explosive noises, the decision to let him take the lead on Darklands proved something of a masterstroke, not least due to it coinciding with the band gatecrashing the mainstream courtesy of 'in between' single 'Some Candy Talking', yet another controversial moment for the Mary Chain thanks to its ambiguous lyrics that had several commentators jumping to conclusions it promoted heroin use.
In terms of commercial success, Darklands breached the top five of the album charts while spawning the band's biggest hit single 'April Skies' which reached the top ten culminating in their one and only 'live' appearance on Top Of The Pops. Delving into its ten pieces it's clear the record was written in a completely different headspace to its predecessor, the likes of 'Cherry Came Too', 'Happy When It Rains' and 'About You' all eschewing skewered messages of a romantic notion, albeit occasionally destructive ("I'm on the edge of something, you take me back to nothing"). Having spent a lot of the recording sessions arguing with their label about producers and such like, its perhaps worth noting that sound engineer John Loder once again augments the band's sonic version with distinction.
Occasionally there is a tendency to increase the volume. 'Down On Me' and 'Fall' both take off into familiar territories of yore at various intervals while even the coda of 'April Skies' signs off with a desultory screech of feedback for good measure. Overall though Darklands showcases the songs in favour of the noise element associated with the band from the outset while dispelling any myths that the band were simply one-trick ponies covering up a lack of musical nuance under an avalanche of reverb. Although not as immediate as Psychocandy, there's little doubt Darklands has also stood the test of time and among its contents lies some of the band's most memorable and popular songs from their entire back catalogue.
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