The Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy -- Paula Mejia, Paperback

The Jesus and Mary Chain's swooning debut Psychocandy seared through the underground and through the pop charts, shifting the role of noise within pop music forever. Post-punk and pro-confusion, Psychocandy became the sound of a generation poised on the brink of revolution, establishing Creation Records as a tastemaking entity in the process. The Scottish band's notorious live performances were both punishingly loud and riot-spurring, inevitably acting as socio-political commentary on tensions emergent in mid-1980s Britain. Through caustic clangs and feedback channeling the rage of the working-class who'd had enough, Psychocandy gestures toward the perverse pleasure in having your eardrums exploded and loudness as a politics within itself.

Yet Psychocandy's blackened candy heart center - calling out to phantoms Candy and Honey with an unsettling charm - makes it a pop album to the core, and not unlike the sugarcoated sounds the Ronettes became famous for in the 1960s. The Jesus and Mary Chain expertly carved out a place where depravity and sweetness entwined, emerging from the isolating underground of suburban Scotland grasping the distinct sound of a generation, apathetic and uncertain. The irresistible Psychocandy emerged as a clairvoyant account of struggle and sweetness that still causes us to grapple with pop music's relation to ourselves.

Author: Paula Mejia
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 10/20/2016
Pages: 136
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 6.40h x 4.70w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9781628929508

About the Author
Paula Mejia is a writer, journalist and critic. Her work has appeared in The Criterion Collection, NPR, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Rolling Stone and other publications.