Slaughtering Sacred Cows: The Jesus and Mary Chain
This is a new column, so a few words of explanation. I have only been writing about music that I love, that has inspired me in some way. The purpose of this column is to add some variety by talking about bands, albums or songs that I personally think have received an unfair amount of commercial or critical praise. It is just an opinion and not meant to cause offence to fans of these groups - sometimes I may even like much of the group in question's work and be playing the devil's advocate in order to make a point. It is detrimental to be in a situation where you receive nothing but praise; even if you are right, arguments are necessary if only to make sure you remember the reasons WHY you are right.
The Jesus and Mary Chain released 'Psychocandy' in 1985, and ever since it has been held up as a classic. It is undeniably a landmark album. JAMC's sound took three-chord poppy songs, influenced by sixties girl groups, and played untamed white noise over the top. Basically they pioneered 'Record Collection Rock'. Part of the enjoyment is recognising the homages the music makes to its influences. This led to more and more bands recycling the past rather than innovating. Which is not to say that the genre has produce no good music - I am a great fan of Stereolab and Primal Scream (at least when they're not pretending to be the Rolling Stones or MC5, but that's another story). But the Mary Chain and this general ideal marked an ideological shift in indie music - using influences more as citations then artistic fuel - which led to Oasis and Blur ripping off The Beatles and The Kinks during Britpop, right through to the modern day post-punk revival's pillaging of the Wire and Gang of Four song book. Not in itself a bad thing, except what happens when bands have finished with history - we've redone the sixties, seventies and eighties, when they historically catch up with themselves, where should new groups look for musical inspiration? It ultimately seems a short-sighted aesthetic approach.
But it would be unfair to blame all of this squarely on The Jesus and Mary Chain. Beyond all of this, my main gripe with them is the music itself. Even fans of the band have to admit that they were a one-trick pony - again not necessarily a bad thing, but your appreciation of their records depend on how much you're blown away by this trick. Considering that combining feedback with melody is nothing new in pop music - The Velvet Underground were doing it in the late sixties, as were Sonic Youth in the eighties and My Bloody Valentine in the nineties. All of these bands used feedback as a compositional device and very strikingly integrated it into their songs, whereas the whole point of the Mary Chain is that the feedback isn't integrated - the pop music and the noise are going on at the same time regardless of each other. Which is admittedly pretty striking the first time you hear it, but once you've gotten over that, it gets old pretty quickly and you can't really take it anywhere much compositionally as the whole point is that they are disassociated. And later in their career, when JAMC removed the feedback, the other problem with this record becomes clear - the band aren't much cop at writing songs. Being only based around three chords needn't be a song writing disadvantage - look at The Ramones and The Velvets again - but almost all of The Jesus and Mary Chain's songs are built around major chord I-IV-V sequences. The Mary Chain wanted to bring 'darkness' back into music, but as their music is based around the same three major chords and simple major key melodies, it lacks the darkness inherent in the Velvet Underground's music, and, without the energy of The Ramones, their songs are just dull to listen to. Combine that with the band's limited lyrical repertoire of girls, drugs and boredom, and it becomes very difficult to tell the difference between most of their songs - in fact, I reckon if you placed the needle randomly on the record, a seasoned fan might have difficulty naming the song. And, as more and more bands reference the Mary Chain sound themselves, the original sounds less and less striking – the whole feedback/melody thing has become so common-place that it seems almost funny that they once managed to incite crowds to riot. I don't think the Jesus and Mary Chain are awful, I just think that they're boring, and so the critical acclaim they are held in utterly baffles me.
The Jesus and Mary Chain released 'Psychocandy' in 1985, and ever since it has been held up as a classic. It is undeniably a landmark album. JAMC's sound took three-chord poppy songs, influenced by sixties girl groups, and played untamed white noise over the top. Basically they pioneered 'Record Collection Rock'. Part of the enjoyment is recognising the homages the music makes to its influences. This led to more and more bands recycling the past rather than innovating. Which is not to say that the genre has produce no good music - I am a great fan of Stereolab and Primal Scream (at least when they're not pretending to be the Rolling Stones or MC5, but that's another story). But the Mary Chain and this general ideal marked an ideological shift in indie music - using influences more as citations then artistic fuel - which led to Oasis and Blur ripping off The Beatles and The Kinks during Britpop, right through to the modern day post-punk revival's pillaging of the Wire and Gang of Four song book. Not in itself a bad thing, except what happens when bands have finished with history - we've redone the sixties, seventies and eighties, when they historically catch up with themselves, where should new groups look for musical inspiration? It ultimately seems a short-sighted aesthetic approach.
But it would be unfair to blame all of this squarely on The Jesus and Mary Chain. Beyond all of this, my main gripe with them is the music itself. Even fans of the band have to admit that they were a one-trick pony - again not necessarily a bad thing, but your appreciation of their records depend on how much you're blown away by this trick. Considering that combining feedback with melody is nothing new in pop music - The Velvet Underground were doing it in the late sixties, as were Sonic Youth in the eighties and My Bloody Valentine in the nineties. All of these bands used feedback as a compositional device and very strikingly integrated it into their songs, whereas the whole point of the Mary Chain is that the feedback isn't integrated - the pop music and the noise are going on at the same time regardless of each other. Which is admittedly pretty striking the first time you hear it, but once you've gotten over that, it gets old pretty quickly and you can't really take it anywhere much compositionally as the whole point is that they are disassociated. And later in their career, when JAMC removed the feedback, the other problem with this record becomes clear - the band aren't much cop at writing songs. Being only based around three chords needn't be a song writing disadvantage - look at The Ramones and The Velvets again - but almost all of The Jesus and Mary Chain's songs are built around major chord I-IV-V sequences. The Mary Chain wanted to bring 'darkness' back into music, but as their music is based around the same three major chords and simple major key melodies, it lacks the darkness inherent in the Velvet Underground's music, and, without the energy of The Ramones, their songs are just dull to listen to. Combine that with the band's limited lyrical repertoire of girls, drugs and boredom, and it becomes very difficult to tell the difference between most of their songs - in fact, I reckon if you placed the needle randomly on the record, a seasoned fan might have difficulty naming the song. And, as more and more bands reference the Mary Chain sound themselves, the original sounds less and less striking – the whole feedback/melody thing has become so common-place that it seems almost funny that they once managed to incite crowds to riot. I don't think the Jesus and Mary Chain are awful, I just think that they're boring, and so the critical acclaim they are held in utterly baffles me.
posted by Jonathan Thornton at 11:20 pm
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