Psychocandy

If the Jesus and Mary Chain were able to parlay the media hype surrounding their early singles into a decade and a half long career as dorm room darlings it is largely because of the mind boggling sonic innovations of their debut album, Psychocandy, and the cult of adoring noise-pop merchants that sprung up in its wake. Certainly the melancholic textures of later Jesus and Mary Chain offerings like Darklands and Honey’s Dead hold a respectable place in the band’s body of work, but it's the feedback strewn pop narcosis of “Just Like Honey” and the distanced cool of “Never Understand” that launched hundreds of imitators, and inspired future greats like J. Mascis and Kevin Shields to take the innovations of Psychocandy a few steps further. Even though Psychocandy made noise-damaged pop excessively fashionable, none of its imitators have yet equaled it. Listening to the record today one does not hear the hyper-confrontational group once trumpeted in the UK press as the new avatars of noise-rock. Instead one hears a self-assured group of dedicated amateurs carefully juxtaposing dissonance against harmony and finding musical transcendence in the process.