Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This album changed my life (I've always wanted to say that!), 30 Jul 2006
Well it did, prior to this I was listening to Queen's 'Greatest Hits', 'Genesis' by Genesis, Rush's '2112' and Scorpions 'World Wide Live'. Dear God, what was I thinking. Basically I hadn't heard 'my' music yet, only my friends taste in it, hence the appalling selection above. This all changed when my best friend Lee bought this album and I listened to it in his bedroom. Quite simply it blew me away. This is the moment, a moment all music lovers have, which I can point to and say 'there, it all started there'. I could bore you with a long list of namechecked bands but I won't, suffice to say that this album and this band led me to exciting new places.
The music itself? Well, I understand that it has just been re-issued and re-mastered which says a lot in itself. It still sounds great, perfect pop underneath a torrent of guitar and drums, fresh as ever, youth captured and held. It deserves its standing as one of the finest debut albums of recent times. What else is there to say but buy it!
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
life changing album number 1, 27 Aug 2007
1985 and i just bought upside down(which sadly doesnt feature on this album,maybe because murray dalglish is on drums)i thought this is incredible so when this finally came out later in the year i was straight there to get this the day it came out and i can still see why i got excited/this is quite simply one of the best albums ever made(and certainly the best thing the vastly over rated bobby gillespie has ever done)right from the start with just like honey brooding setting the tone of pop song with an edge/pefectly welding melody with distortion and feedback/as on taste the floor and you trip me up to the subtler sowing seeds/i played this non stop when it came out and it still gets the occasional airing and i think it stands up well to the test of time/if you are new to the jamc get this or barbed wire kisses as everything else from darklands and onwards is sadly a complete waste of time/they should have given up after this and left a legacy of having made one of the most influential guitar albums of all time
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19 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reissue of classic debut album , 18 Jun 2006
The Jesus & Mary Chain's debut album, now re-released in re-mastered form with former bonus track `Some Candy Talking' removed, remains their definitive album and their greatest achievement. Everything that followed didn't quite measure up, though if you have all the albums and compilations, you can discover later joys such as `Here Comes Alice', `Sidewalking', `Sometimes Always', `Cracking Up' & `Heat' (the latter bizarrely turning up in an advert and was later retitled `Teenage Lust' in relation to an MC5 song and a Larry Clark book of photographs).
The Mary Chain just happened rumour has it their demos were on a tape which had Syd Barrett on one side and them on the other, Bobby Gillespie (The Wake) listened to it and got Alan McGee involved and some Malcolm McClaren-style marketing later, they were the next controversial band. The Reid brothers wrote the material and were joined by Douglas Hart (bass) and Gillespie (Moe Tucker-style drumming), and with this album set the template for many bands over the following years - The House of Love, Ultra Vivid Scene, Primal Scream (who would cover `Darklands' and have Reid sing on `Evil Heat'), The Stone Roses, Ride, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Teenage Fanclub, The Vaselines, My Bloody Valentine, The Heart Throbs, Spacemen 3, Moose, Curve, Chapterhouse, Slowdive, The Boo Radleys, Brakes (who covered `Sometimes Always'), the Black Rebel Motorycle Club, The Kills, Singapore Sling & AR Kane. Predictably some of these acts would surpass the Mary Chain, but this album is key and as significant as `Revolver', `Never Mind the Bollocks', or `Never Mind.' It should be considered along those indisputable and influential classics and I can happily report it still stands up these days.
The Mary Chain nodded to lots of bands who were out of critical favour in the 1980s - the Velvets, The MC5, The Stooges, The Elevators; as well as having songs as perfect as early Beach Boys or prime-Spector. It's all classic, there are no bad songs here, and it seems wrong that this came below Ride's `Nowhere' in the NME 100 Best Albums feature a month or so ago!
Hard to single out tracks, but opener `Just Like Honey', which was memorably featured in the dénouement of `Lost in Translation', is certainly one. `In a Hole' and `Inside Me' sound like the Velvets informed by The Birthday Party and Joy Division, while songs like `Taste of Cindy', `Never Understand', `The Hardest Walk', & `You Trip Me Up' are certainly pop songs. And great ones at that. The gorgeous `Cut Dead' showcases a sweeter, acoustic side and would be the template for `Stoned and Dethroned' several years later. The double-whammy of `The Living End' (whose title was borrowed for the controversial film of the same name) and `Taste the Floor' seems to epitomise the album - waves of feedback, a killer melody and just the right side of rock'n'roll clichés. `Psychocandy' is a great, great album and one of those wild feedback-drenched rock'n'roll albums from the era that need to be owned ; the others being - The Gun Club's `Fire of Love', Spacemen 3's `Sound of Confusion', My Bloody Valentine's `Isn't Anything', Pussy Galore's `Dial M for Mother*ucker', Ultra Vivid Scene's 1988 debut, & Loop's `Heaven's End.' A very welcome reissue from a band that deserve to be remembered, despite the mediocrity of much of their subsequent back-catalogue.
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