The Jesus and Mary Chain - Ranking the Albums (Psychocandy through Glasgow Eyes)
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- Опубліковано 7 вер 2024
- The Jesus and Mary Chain - we're ranking the 8 studio albums - Psychocandy (1985), Darklands (1987), Automatic (1989), Honey's Dead (1992), Stoned and Dethroned (1994), Munki (1998), Damage and Joy (2007) and Glasgow Eyes (2024).
Joining me is writer/curator Greg Fasolino (Creem, Fangoria, Trouser Press, Guitar for the Practicing Musician, The Harrow), and Frank Deserto (Post-Punk.com, Systems of Romance Blog, The Harrow).
We look forward to interacting with you in the comments section. Don't forget to subscribe.
PLAYLISTS:
Bret: • The Jesus and Mary Cha...
Greg: • The Jesus and Mary Cha...
Greg's footage from the JAMC's NYC show in 1985: • The Jesus and Mary Cha...
Frank: • The Jesus & Mary Chain...
* Check out some of our other ranking videos *
Slowdive: • Slowdive - Ranking the...
Bauhaus: • Bauhaus - Ranking the ...
Cocteau Twins: • Cocteau Twins - Rankin...
Dead Can Dance: • Dead Can Dance - Ranki...
Smashing Pumpkins: • Smashing Pumpkins - Ra...
The Smiths: • The Smiths - Ranking t...
Depeche Mode: • Depeche Mode - Ranking...
Find others in the Album Ranking Episodes playlist here on my channel
Feature on Zoe Howe's book on The Jesus and Mary Chain: • [Friday On The Turntab...
Other links to investigate:
BRET'S LINKS
Audra: audra.bandcamp.com
Instagram: / bretlifeonthisplanet
GREG'S LINKS:
The Harrow: theharrownyc.b...
UA-cam Channel: / @greengerg
FRANK'S LINKS:
No Songs Tomorrow: Darkwave Compilation (curated by Frank on Cherry Red Records): amzn.to/3UDGz1w (Amazon affiliate link)
The Harrow: theharrownyc.b...
Systems of Romance: www.systemsofro...
Post-Punk.com: post-punk.com/...
#vinyl #records #jamc#thejesusandmarychain #shoegaze #alternative #noisepop #psychocandy #darklands #automatic #honeysdead #munki #damageandjoy #glasgoweyes #scotland #eastkilbride #ranking #ranked #albumranking #albumrankings #williamreid #jimreid
What a fantastic show! Love me some Jesus and Mary Chain. Here’s my ranking of these incredible albums along with my favorite tracks!
1) Darklands: April Skies, Happy When It Rains. Deep One Perfect Morning
2) Munki: Cracking Up, I Love Rock N Roll, I Hate Rock N Roll
3) Stoned & Dethroned: Sometimes Always, Never Saw It Coming, You’ve Been A Friend
4) Honey’s Dead: Reverence, Tumbledown, Almost Gold
5) Damage & Joy: Can't Stop the Rock, All Things Pass, Facing Up to the Facts
6) Psychocandy: Just Like Honey, Never Understand, Something's Wrong
7) Automatic: Head On, Blues from a Gun, Halfway to Crazy
8) Glasgow Eyes: Mediterranean X Film, Discotheque, Chemical Animal
Great to see Darklands in your #1 spot as well, Nathan! Thanks for tuning in.
One of my all time favorite bands!
Here's my ranking.
8. Glasgow Eyes.
Parts are ok I guess. Chemical Animal is as great as anything they've ever done. The Eagles and The Beatles is the worst thing they've ever done
7. Damage and Joy
Again, it's ok. The production is wafer thin and it never really seems to achieve lift off.
6. Stoned and Dethroned
This is where it gets tough because I love all of their albums from here on up. Excellent songwriting and a different direction for them. Come On, God Help Me, You've Been A Friend, Sometimes Always...great stuff.
5. Automatic
Slick and polished but still cool as hell. Blues From a Gun, Gimme Hell..if the Pixies are covering your songs you're doing something right. The first time I saw them live was on this tour. Nine Inch Nails opened for them.
4) Honey's Dead.
Not a bad song on the album. Reverence when played live is a facemelter. I wish the end of Sundown went on forever.
3. Munki.
A couple of strange songs on here but the great ones make up for it. I love a good William Reid guitar freakout and there's plenty of them on here. Dream Lover might be their best song. Man on the Moon, Virtually Unreal, Hate/Love Rock and Roll. Fucking awesome.
2. Darklands
Masterpiece. Every song rules. I could write a book (I've blathered too long already) about how much I love this album and how it helped me get through many a breakup.
1. Psychocandy
I remember seeing the video for Just Like Honey on a late night video show called Nite Flight. It blew my 15 year old mind. Growing up in rural Massachusetts, it was difficult to find the record but when I did, that record sat on my turntable for months. Every song rules. Masterpiece.
I didn't include Barbed Wire Kisses or any of their other comp/b-side collections but there's a fuckton of awesome songs out there as well.
As a big fan of JAMC, this was so fun and interesting to watch. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great ranking guys! I first seen JAMC play at the Hacienda in Manchester in 84/85. Psychocandy, Darklands and Honey's Dead make up my top 3...really hard to pick a favourite out of those. Favourite tracks off those three would be My Little Underground, Nine Million Rainy Days and Almost Gold.
Looking forward to the next ranking vid, keep up the good work guys!
Hey Rob! Was there a support act when you saw them at the Hacienda? Must've been incredible to see them at that point. Thanks for watching!
Yeah it was awesome! They were supported by Felt and another band which I can't remember... many years ago lol
Barbed Wire Kisses remains my overall fav JAMC CD. B sides are all too often the best for fans.
hitting the like button and commenting immediately because i love J&MC and this series/dudes.
Right on! :)
First 7 could go sway into nearly any order on any given day but right now for me:
Honey's Dead
Darklands
Psychocandy
Automatic
Munki
Stoned and Dethroned
Damage and Joy
Glasgow Eyes
Thanks for posting your list, Scotty.
Great job guys! Really enjoyed the video.
Thank you!
Great conversation about one of my Top 5 favourite bands.
I know Darklands is my #1, id probably go
#2 Stoned & Dethroned
#3 Psychocandy
#4 Automatic
#5 Honey’s Dead
#6 Munki
#7 Damage and Joy
#8 Glasgow Eyes
Thanks for watching! Glad you enjoyed our discussion.
Thank you for some candy talking about the best band ever!!! Great show!
It's so hard for me to rank the Mary Chain albums, but I'll make it good for my soul:
8 - Glasgow Eyes (Jamcod, Chemical Animal, Venal Joy)
7 - Damage and Joy (All Things Pass, War on Peace, Black and Blues)
6 - Stoned and Dethroned (Sometimes Always, Bullet Lovers, Dirty Water)
5 - Munki (Virtually Unreal, Cracking Up, Birthday)
4 - Automatic (UV Ray, Blues From a Gun, Gimme Hell)
3 - Darklands ( Fall, April Skies, Happy When it Rains)
2 - Psychocandy (In a Hole, Inside Me, Just Like Honey)
1 - Honey's Dead (all songs)
Maybe tomorrow it will be different
Glad you enjoyed, Sergio! Thanks for watching.
Barbed Wire Kisses is #1 for me. Great b sides.
8. Glasgow Eyes
7. Damage and Joy
6. Stoned and Dethroned
5. Munki
4. Darklands
3. Psychocandy
2. Honey's Dead
1. Automatic
Cool to see Automatic in the #1 spot. Thanks for the list!
Hey there - great to see you checking these out - been a while!
08) Psychocandy (2.5 stars)
07) Damage and Joy (3.25 stars)
06) Glasgow Eyes (4 stars)
05) Munki (4.25 stars)
04) Automatic (4.25 stars)
03) Darklands (4.5 stars)
02) Stoned & Dethroned (5 stars)
01) Honey's Dead (5 stars)
0 stars - irredeemably terrible/insultingly bad/the worst
.5 stars - terrible
1 star - bad
1.5 stars - pretty bad
2 stars - fair
2.5 stars - meh
2.75 stars - "It's OK, but quit playing it."
3 stars - OK/decent
3.25 stars - pretty good
3.5 stars - good
4 stars - very good
4.5 stars - excellent
5 stars - blowup girl and some LSD
notes:
* I was never much of a fan of The Jesus and Mary Chain until Honey's Dead came along and then I went ga ga. I have a lot of history listening to Honey's Dead and Stoned & Dethroned which must have something to do with why I rate and rank them so high.
* This band is very druggy and a little sleazy. Very druggy sound, quite dark but with plenty of sweetness and light shining through as well.
* Psychocandy is the ultimate J&MC album for many. But for me it's just too noisy. In most of these songs there is an oppressive wall of noise and feedback that is just not very musical (although sometimes it is in subtle ways). There is a difference between "heavy" and "harsh," and most of these songs are just too harsh. I do like the metallic textures and there's some good (if rather primitive) songs underneath, but the noise is just too much. If this is your thing, I could see why the other albums just don't do it for you like this one does.
* The absence of the "wall of noise" on their second album Darklands is most welcome. But I never got turned on to this album back in the day. I thought it should be "dark" like the title says and I found the singles were not so dark. But revisiting the album for this list was a pleasure - lots of 5-star songs. There is darkness too, plenty of druggy vibes and lyrics about death. "Fall" has a classic alt-rock drum beat that would go on to be quite popular with bands like The Breeders.
* My first impression of Automatic back in the day was that it was indeed "automatic" as in "just going through the motions." I have since gotten over that notion though. Automatic sounds quite good. It sports that classic alt-rock beat on many of these songs - too many in fact - it gets pretty stale towards the end of the album. The Reid brothers were using drum machines at this point and probably could have used a live drummer. "Drop" and "Sunray" were added to the CD but the album (vinyl) is better without them. "UV Ray" is noisy but it's done quite effectively.
* Honey's Dead is just kick ass. It retains their heavy, distorted guitar sound and mixes it with alternative dance beats. There's just the right amount of controlled noise and it sounds so cool. Some songs are kinda like early Brit pop at times with a tasty harder edge. I used to skip the first and last tracks because I thought all that crap about wanting to "die like Jesus Christ" and JFK was them trying too hard to sound cool and edgy - it was a turnoff. I've gotten over that though, thanks to a conversation I had with a fellow fan. Now I just see it as sort of like campy black humor and I can dig it.
* Stoned & Dethroned is just a great mellow acoustic album to put on and chill out with. Loads of melodic 5-star songs. Not a single weak track - nothing under 4 stars.
* Munki finds the band changing things up a bit with some unusual instrumentation and experiments along with their usual distorted guitars. I like the way they play with sound and distorted voices a bit between songs. "Perfume" with Hope Sandoval is brilliant and hypnotic. "Moe Tucker" is like surf electronica while "Cracking Up" gets a bit Brit-poppy. There's some horns on a few of these songs, some weird piano. Some of their themes are getting a bit tired though.
* Damage and Joy unfortunately has some things working against it. On Spotify, Amazon Music and UA-cam, the album is only available in a deluxe version with a mixed up running order sprinkled with bonus cuts instead of tacking them on the end. So annoying! Obviously this screws up the listening experience from what was originally intended. I ended up skipping around on my own to replicate the original running order. What's worse, the opening track is censored even though it's labelled "explicit." I fucking hate censorship! A lot of these songs were previously released in other forms under other names. "War on Peace" drags too much to be the second track. "Song for a Secret" reminds me of "Sometimes Always" while "The Two of Us" reminds me of Modern Lovers. Quite a few times J&MC melodies sound "familiar," but I'm not going to go too far down that rabbit hole into what song sounds like what. One of these songs rhymes "guy" with "guy." Not the first time they have done something like that. Some of these lyrics are really fucked up:
"I killed Kurt Cobain
I put the shot right through his brain
And his wife gave me the job
Cuz I'm a big, fat, lying slob"
"Facing up to the facts" has the line "Can't find a hole I can put my erection." Not a great song but the cool guitar saves it.
* Cheers mates!!!!!!!!!!
10) Perfume (Munki)
09) Bullet Lovers (Stoned & Dethroned)
08) Wish I Could (Stoned & Dethroned)
07) Come On (Stoned & Dethroned)
06) You've Been a Friend (Stoned & Dethroned)
05) Sugar Ray (Honey's Dead)
04) Good for My Soul (Honey's Dead)
03) Far Gone and Out (Honey's Dead)
02) Teenage Lust (Honey's Dead)
01) Catchfire (Honey's Dead)
My JAMC:
1. Darklands 5/5
2. Psychocandy 5/5
3. Munki 5/5
4. Automatic 4.5/5
5. Glasgow Eyes 4.5/5
6. Honey's Dead 4.5/5
7. Stoned & Dethroned 4/5
8. Damage & Joy 3.5/5
I LOVE this band! I've seen them live a buncha times, starting in 1987. I've met Jim Reid twice, and Douglas Hart twice. Cool guys. Kind guys. I'm not very cool. I'm kinda goofy. Yet they were very nice to me, and treated me well. One of my favorite bands of all time. You guys in the video don't seem to have much passion for them. But that's OK. I can't wait to see them in concert again.
We have the passion, I personally was just trying to be even-keeled about them! They have so much great material, but so much that is repetitive, or perhaps even best enjoyed in smaller doses, and some material that is amazing and underrated vs. some things that are universally celebrated without criticism. Such a formative band for me, and now just a sometimes (always) fav.
That's my thumbs up there!
Mine goes like:
1. Psychocandy (1985) = 5/5 stars
2. Automatic (1989) = 4.5/5 stars
3. Stones and Dethroned (1994) = 4/5 stars
4. Honey’s Dead (1992) = 4/5 stars
5. Darklands (1987) = 3/5 stars
6. Munki (1998) = 2.5/5 stars
7. Damage and Joy (2017) = 2.5/5 stars
8. Glasgow Eyes (2024) = 1.5/5 stars
I don’t think Darklands is that good, honestly, although it does have some good songs including two amazing songs that are among their best songs ever(Happy When it Rains and April Skies!)!
Thanks for watching and posting your list!
Damage and Joy is NOT from 2007, but from 2017.
Correct. It came out in 2017.