the jesus and mary chain - darklands

Slow day at work. So, I scribbled out some nonsense about the album I was listening to at the time. Which happened to be Darklands by the Jesus and Mary Chain. Here it is, transcribed from Post-it notes, verbatim (for better or worse).

I have gone on record potentially millions of times as saying that Psychocandy is the most perfect album ever created. I love bubblegum pop, and I love noise, therefore I fucking love bubblegum noise. Simple mathematics.

Unfortunately, the Chain never quite returned to that formula ever again. They never really gave up the feedback, but the noise was gone--the raw quality fueled by a musical naivete so pure that the idea of tuning their guitars was novel and quaint. And yet the approach managed to result in an album of brilliant pop songs about speed and sex, even if you did have to strain a bit to pick out the melodies.

There's no straining required for Darklands, however. There's damn near nothing BUT melodies. It's basically Psychocandy without the danger. Which is cool and all, but...the danger is what made the Reid brothers cool to begin with.

Darklands is really just a power pop album with Velvet Underground beats. You could easily hear Big Star or the Smithereens playing every song on this album. Which makes sense, I suppose, seeing how power pop is the most derivative genre of music ever created. I mean that's the whole point, isn't it?

I may be getting a bit hyperbolic here. There's definitely a level of melancholy here Alex Chilton couldn't touch. "Nine Million Rainy Days"? Come on now. That's pure Reid downer nonsense. Only this time around, the sound matches the subject. Psychocandy made disparate odes to speeding your life away sound like Beach Boys b-sides. Which was what made it so charming to begin with.

Darklands is just so goddamn...practical. And that's just no fun at all.

(Proof.)