What is Psychocandy? Is it a mental condition, or perhaps a dangerously potent boiled sweet?
There are two correct answers, the first being it's the title of the 1985 debut album from Scottish rockers the Jesus and Mary Chain.
The second answer: its a musical complexion.
Which word could better describe the Jekyll and Hyde character of the band's sound? The twin guitars of East Kilbride brothers William and Jim Reid leap between moments of calm and fits of deranged white noise, tethered to Earth by rudimentary bass and drums while echo-drenched vocals draw on pop's purest essence.
It was psychotic . . . and sweet.
For a while, the Mary Chain was cooler than anything you could name. The music joined the dots between a Ramones three-chord blitz, a fuzzed-out Glitterband sing-along and a shimmering Shangri-Las set piece, mapping out the path the post-punk generation would follow on its mission to reconnect with melody.
However, lest the group be accused of overstepping the mellowness mark, its public persona was at best remote and at worst belligerent. Its notoriously short live sets were often marred by violence, the Reids seldom appearing anything less than excruciatingly bored.
Psychocandy captures these wonderful contradictions in 45 wildly uneven minutes.
The cavernous, Spector-influenced beauty Just Like Honey opens proceedings, affording the listener a glimpse of the band's appealingly soft underbelly before making way for the swarm-of-angry-bees guitars of The Living End and Taste The Floor.
Later, punk rock throwaway In a Hole is followed by blissed-out acoustic gem Taste of Cindy before Never Understand kicks in with its Beach-Boys-on-speed melody and vocal hook.
Whenever pop sensibilities threaten to rise above the din, a squall of shrieking guitars sandblasts them to smithereens. It's as if the Mary Chain was punishing itself for impure thoughts.
Perhaps Psychocandy is a mental condition, after all.
