The jesus and mary chain's psychocandy, paperback/paula mejia

The Jesus and Mary Chains swooning debut Psychocandy seared through the underground and through the pop charts, shifting the role of noise within pop music forever.

Post-punk and pro-confusion, Psychocandy became the sound of a generation poised on the brink of revolution, establishing Creation Records as a tastemaking entity in the process.

The Scottish bands notorious live performances were both punishingly loud and riot-spurring, inevitably acting as socio-political commentary on tensions emergent in mid-1980s Britain.

Through caustic clangs and feedback channeling the rage of the working-class whod had enough, Psychocandy gestures toward the perverse pleasure in having your eardrums exploded and loudness as a politics within itself.

Yet Psychocandy s blackened candy heart center - calling out to phantoms Candy and Honey with an unsettling charm - makes it a pop album to the core, and not unlike the sugarcoated sounds the Ronettes became famous for in the 1960s.

The Jesus and Mary Chain expertly carved out a place where depravity and sweetness entwined, emerging from the isolating underground of suburban Scotland grasping the distinct sound of a generation, apathetic and uncertain.

The irresistible Psychocandy emerged as a clairvoyant account of struggle and sweetness that still causes us to grapple with pop musics relation to ourselves.