Jesus and Mary Chain

Yet another band I'm late to discover. I was reading an article in Spin magazine about all the bands that were reuniting this year. They listed Rage Against the Machine (who are certainly one of my very favorite bands), Spice Girls, Smashing Pumpkins and Jesus and Mary Chain. I was suprised to see this, to me, no name band amongst several well known bands. This perplexed me, so I checked them out to see what they were like. My next clue that they were something big was that they were one of the headliners at this year's Coachella. The first song that I came across by them was Just Like Honey. I immedietly fell in love with that song, so I decided to purchase the album with Just Like Honey on it (which was coincedently their magnum opus), Psychocandy. Unfortunately, many of the songs on Psychocandy were not like the amazing song Just Like Honey. Most of the songs are filled with large amounts of distortion which kind of ruin those songs for me. However, the songs that aren't filled with an overabundance of distortion are quite amazing.

As far as The Jesus and Mary Chain's genre goes, they were one of the quintessential bands of the little known shoegazing genre. Shoegazing was "big"/at it's peak in the early 90's, but originated with in the early 80's. The genre got it's name because the bands would often stand on the stage, motionless (besides obviously playing their instruments) while staring at their shoes. An example of modern shoegazers (or nu-gazers as they are called) is the Silversun Pickups. The Jesus and Mary Chain (whose music is in no way religious oddly enough) would somehow manage to rile thier crowds in riots despite thier shoegazine music. At times they would play shows with their backs turned to the audience and never speak to the audience. Although trashing one's instruments after playing a show (ex. when Pete Wentz throws his bass into a bunch of drums and storms off in anger) is almost cliche now for any "bad ass" band, The Jesus and Mary Chain were among the first to do this, which contributed to their mass riots.

While this scottish group of shoegazers may not be for everyone, I would still recomend at lest checking out Psychocandy or 21 Singles (a sort of best of). I'm quite excited to hear what they will sound like now that they've reunited (they've announced that they're back in the studio).

Here's the video for my favorite song by them, Just Like Honey: