The Jesus and Mary Chain

[Sits]

The Jesus and Mary Chain. Whenever it was, however many years ago that I first heard that name, I positioned them on my head as a Goth band. And they've sat there, ignored ever since. A few months ago one of their songs came on my "Discover Weekly" Spotify playlist, and since then it's been very enjoyable getting acquainted. Right up my alley.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Honey's Dead is one of my most listened to albums these days. I didn't fully appreciate it at the time and I think it got overlooked because it did wear it's influences very clearly on its sleeve (Stooges, Velvets and Dinosaur Jr, there's one track which is complete rip of Freak Scene) and they also tried to go a bit "baggy". But it just rocks from start to finish, the singles, Reverence and especially Far Gone and Out are just brilliant.

Other than that, hearing Psycho Candy for the first time when I was 15 was one of those jaw-dropping moments in my discovering-music years, up there with hearing "Trout Mask Replica", Rebel Without a Pause, Napalm Death or "Loveless" for the first time.

[Bored Of Education]

They were billed as "The Beach Boys through massive distortion" and, of course, they never lived up to that so I remained underwhelmed. i actually thought they were going to sound like The Leather Nun doing 'Gimme, Gimme, Gimme' eventually did. 'Sidewalking' kept my then band off of the 'Single Of The Week' spot in Sounds so always had a nudge again them due to that.

[Jah Womble]

The J&MC weren't goth by any stretch, but did attract a fair bit of a following from the goth-brigade. Big hair and nihilistic attitude probably secured that for them.

Over the years, they seemed to straddle a multitude of genres including post-punk, psychedelic, alt-country and swamp-rock. As I mentioned over on the Irredeemable Bands thread, the J&MC were even described as 'grunge' when Automatic was released - ie, some good while before the Seattle crew came to town.