The Jesus & Mary Chain - 21 Singles (Rhino)

Ten pretty good reasons why this record, and indeed everything else touched by the preternaturally-aged hands of Messrs Jim and William Reid, is an essential purchase.

1. Mary Chain founders Jim and William Reid gave a young Alan McGee an idea. That idea was to take the shiny pop tunes of the Sixties beat boom and mesh them with huge sodding great slabs of feedback, fuck-you-all additood and the squabbling principles of brotherhood. This, yunnerstan, was A Good Idea. Sadly McGee, having signed JAMC in 1984 and released their debut single (the still immaculately frazzled Upside Down), promptly lost them to Warners, wouldn't let it lie and tried to repeat the formula in the early Nineties. The result was Oasis, a band who nicked JAMC's stagecraft and fraternal theatre but forgot to be any good for more than one and a half albums.

2. And while we're on the subject, no all Mary Chain albums don't sound the same, as someone tried to convince us recently. If 21 Singles shows us anything, it's that the band developed their leather'n'bikes'n'nihilism schtick over the years - anyone who thinks Psychocandy is their only decent album clearly hasn't listened to Darklands or Honey's Dead recently. Or Automatic. Shit, that's nearly all of them. Well anyway.

3. That magnificent bit at the end of "Far Gone And Out" (the sort of record Christina Aguilera would release if she had any self-awareness and made records that sound like she looks, ie. dirty scuzzy bouncy sexy stoopid POP) where the tune virtually shudders to a halt, then the lead guitar line creeps in, deceptively timidly, then THE WHOLE DAMN THING EXPLODES with a mighty "A-HEY HEY HEY!" crunchy coda that makes Blur's "Song 2" sound like a Belle & Sebastian ballad marathon.

4. The fact that Bobby Gillespie was their drummer for years and stood up in front of his two (all you need, of course - bass drum, snare drum and big fuck-off sticks, lots of them) drums a la Mo Tucker. God they looked cool, even with the terrible sub-Bunnymen hair.

5. Amazon.com says "Customers who bought titles by [The] Jesus & Mary Chain also bought titles by The Strokes, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, White Stripes, My Bloody Valentine" - Might we have the temerity to replace the words "also bought titles by" with the word "include"? Thankyou. None of these bands would sound or look anything like they do had it not been for Jim & William and their "let's give The Velvet Underground aesthetic to a whole new generation, but let's mix it with the Ronettes and the Beach Boys and the Ramones, just to see what happens" moment of clarity.

6. Even though it all went wrong when William hooked up with Hope Sandoval - yeah, they went all wussy and (ugh! ugh! ) semi-acoustic all of a sudden, those tunes are gorgeous, broken-backed freaks of beauty.

7. Every great band has its own lexicon: It's what separates the charlatans from the icons. You can play your own Mary Chain drinking game if you like - all you need is this album, a large bottle of own-brand vodka and STARSANDHEROES' unique list of JAMC mots-de-choix. Take a sip every time you hear any of the following:

trip
honey
head
hard
dead
candy
underground
cut
hit
kill
jesus
love
fire
sugar
rain
cherry
gold
morning
down
dark
taste
gun
pray
hell
come
bullet
end

You can see where they're coming from, right? The intoxicating combination of sex and death, the delicious collision of sweetness and darkness, it's entirely irresistible. In fact, you don't even need a copy of 21 Singles to play this game - just walk around town and play it anyway. Go on...go on...

8. Top Of The Pops, 1987. Even though the sound's turned down, we are entirely entranced by the black-clad boys onstage, seemingly legless amid the tumbling dry ice, back-combed hair rising like mushrooms from skinny necks - "When I saw/The mushroom head/I was born/And I was dead" - backs to the audience and playing like it's the last thing they'll ever do. Nobody can even remember what song they were playing, but with a performance as electric as that, who cares?

9. JAMC's remixes of The Sugarcubes' hitherto unimprovable "Birthday". That's it. go find them. They're *amazing*.

10. Frankly, we could go on doing this for weeks. If you don't own any JAMC records, buy 21 Singles: a slightly shonky reissue it may be, but you can't fault the gems within. If, of course, you already own a couple of albums, 21 Singles will make you rush out and buy the rest. That's how powerful those two speed-freak skinny-boy brothers from East Kilbride can be. Don't mess with the demons of rock'n'roll, you might end up just like them. If only...

The Jesus & Mary Chain website

(originally published 16th July 2002)