Taste the Floor: The Jesus and Mary Chain's Pro-Confusion, Politicized '80s Pop and Psychocandy's Demonic Success
Open AccessThe Jesus and Mary Chain's swooning debut Psychocandy seared through the underground and to the top of the pop charts, shifting the role of noise within pop music indefinitely. Both post-punk and pro-confusion, Psychocandy became the sound of a generation of unrest, establishing Creation Records as a taste-making force in the process. The Scottish band's notorious live performances were both punishingly loud and incited riots, aesthetically and sonically becoming socio-political commentary on tensions emergent in mid-1980s Britain. Through caustic clangs and feedback channeling the rage of the working-class generation who'd had enough, Psychocandy encapsulates the perverse pleasure in having your eardrums exploded while exploring loudness as a politics within itself, not unlike the S&M; pleasure of noisecore.Yet Psychocandy's blackened candy heart center - calling out to phantoms Candy and Honey with an unsettling charm and feminist bent - makes it a pop record to the core, not unlike the croons of definitive girl groups. Drawing from the sweetness of '60s girl groups, The Stooges' masochistic stage antics and Lou Reed's feedback-laced guitar swells, The Jesus and Mary Chain expertly carved out a place where depravity and sweetness entwined. The fellows emerged from the isolating underground of suburban Scotland and became the sound of a generation, apathetic and uncertain. The record's cult popularity became embedded within the sacred canon of pop music while subverting it completely. Through expertly cultivating their image and cultivating musical talents, the irresistible Psychocandy emerged as a clairvoyant account of pop mastery that still confounds and swoons listeners nearly thirty years later.
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