Six Degrees of Psychocandy
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five other albums we've deemed related in some way. In some cases these connections are obvious, in others they are tenuous. But, most important to you, all of the records are highly, highly recommended.
The Album
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History is kind to its monoliths: Stonehenge, the Great Pyramids, Psychocandy. The Jesus and Mary Chain's debut became an alt-rock touchstone the day it was released in 1985, an immediate influence on the band's contemporaries among them My Bloody Valentine, whose 1991 LP Loveless looms even larger over a generation of art-of-noise guitarists. But who wants to sit around and compare the size of other guys' monuments? Psychocandy is venerated for its attitude as much as its sound, the product of scrawny, sullen brothers from East Kilbride, Scotland, who gave fuck-all about the present or future but absolutely worshiped rock 'n' roll's past. That's as good an explanation as any for Psychocandy opener "Just Like Honey," whose girl-group vocal melody and drumbeat lifted directly from the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" make it sound like a prayer to God, Phil Spector and Lou Reed: "Please make me cool." Prior to Psychocandy, Jim and William Reid had released a series of noisy indie singles and staged 20-minute shows played with their backs to the audience, so it wasn't too much of a surprise that JAMC would suck you in with creepy romanticism right before it spits in your eye with the earsplitting feedback of a motorbike-obsessed song called "The Living End." Welcome to the Reid brothers' personal buzzsaw, 14 short songs that are cruel companions to your treble control knob when the amplifiers squeal into the dog-whistle spectrum of hearing. It can be a harrowing experience when the relentless static of "In a Hole" threatens to give you a three-minute migraine. But just in case you didn't read the album's title, Psychocandy has some awfully sweet stuff buried under its layers of noise. Few bands have been as primal and tender as JAMC on "The Hardest Walk" and "Cut Dead," back-to-back songs that reveal a serious penchant for the strung-out hymns of the Velvet Underground. Absurdly, "Sowing Seeds" uses the same Ronettes drumbeat stolen by "Just Like Honey," suggesting either inability on the part of drummer Bobby Gillespie (who went on to later fame with Primal Scream) or a complete lack of conscience. It's more likely the latter. If posed a question about their influences circa Psychocandy, the Reid brothers probably would've cited themselves. Yet it's doubtful the Reids would have guessed they'd have so many disciples in the decades to come.
I’ve Been Phil Spectored, Resurrected
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To say that the Raveonettes' sound is a degree removed from the Jesus And Mary Chain puts too much distance between the two bands; some other, smaller unit of measurement will need to be invented in order to communicate how closely the Danish duo of Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo has studied the Psychocandy playbook. To the Raveonettes' credit, however, they managed to take the girl-group-with-guitar-fuzz recipe found on "Just Like Honey" and run with it for entire albums. For 2003 debut Chain Gang of Love, they even enlisted Richard Gottehrer (who penned 1963 hit "My Boyfriend's Back") as producer. Of course, having an actual female in your retro-styled post-punk girl group helps, too. The presence of the platinum-blonde Foo and the pop-hit potential on Chain Gang of Love make the Raveonettes a highly fantastic EuroDisney dream version of the Mary Chain.
The Sound Of Young Scotland
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Scottish boys making noise. Coming of age in the post-rock era and possessing intimate knowledge of Sonic Youth albums, the members of Glasgow's Mogwai detonated their guitars in a more stealthy, purposeful manner than JAMC did. On 1997 debut Young Team, "Like Herod" takes three minutes longer than most entire songs on Psychocandy to implode, yet the deft control of feedback and distortion could only have been learned from their elders in nearby East Kilbride. The Reid brothers' caustic noise surfaced at a time when the U.K. indie scene was enthralled by the Smiths and their mildly jangling clones; Mogwai came along just as Glasgow fell under the spell of Belle & Sebastian and a second wave of introverted popsters. Coincidence? No way. Gobbling drugs and splitting eardrums with menacing rock action, JAMC and Mogwai each served as wrecking balls to prevailing trends of too-polite rock.
The Rebel Yell
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As with the Raveonettes, the link between Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Psychocandy is nearly genetic from the hair to the sunglasses to the black leather jackets, the members of BRMC seemed to spring directly from the double helix of JAMC. The San Francisco group's singers guitarist Peter Hayes and bassist Robert Been have the Reids' laconic vocal style, and the mythos that goes with it, down pat. Rather than re-tread the Psychocandy vapor trail of BRMC's first pair of albums, consider the similar twist of fate that brought both bands to an Americana crossroads: JAMC made the country-noir Stoned & Dethroned in 1994, and BRMC invoked a country-blues style on 2005's Howl. Black Rebel embraced its American heritage in a stunningly accomplished manner, and Howl turns out to be an occasionally gospel-stomping, frequently affecting collection of acoustic blues songs. Where the Reid brothers became fish out of water with this style of music, BRMC weathered a potentially disastrous storm with surprising facility.
Have You Gone Mental?
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It almost seems perverse that the '00s would produce yet another band so clearly cut from the lining of the Reid brothers' leather jackets has JAMC usurped Joy Division as the most seminal act from post-punk England? but San Diego duo Crocodiles volunteered for service with 2009 debut Summer of Hate. Charles Rowell and Brandon Welchez are in dead-ringer territory with the squealing feedback of "Refuse Angels" and the synth-drum-driven, Phil Spectorized "I Wanna Kill." (The latter song's title is not a commentary on the legendary producer's murder conviction.) Crocodiles' redeeming quality is their ability to make their distorted songs shimmer with heat-wave intensity, adding just enough new-wavey keyboard touches (the group's name is also the title of an Echo & The Bunnymen album, after all) to balance the needle-sharp guitars. As with the Raveonettes and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, it's not an open-and-shut case of Crocodiles being willfully unoriginal. It's involuntary coolness, two and a half decades removed.
