Review Summary: Compromise
Darklands is an album by the Jesus and Mary Chain that is
listenable, and in 1987 that’s about the biggest compromise the band could ever make. It’s a compromise that shifted the band into varying states of apathetic alt-rock for the rest of their career, leaving
Psychocandy as a feedback-laden outlier in their discography. It also left the latter unjustly labelled as the band’s only majorly influential contribution to musical history, when
Darklands is almost as prophetic of the UK’s pop resurgence in the mid ‘90s - a la Teenage Fanclub - as
Psychocandy was to the rise of shoegaze. It’s also incredibly damn
good at the band’s particular brand of music - perhaps the best possible outcome of the band’s divergence from their ‘noise-pop pioneer’ reputation.
Of course, the band was always ‘The Brothers Reid’ more than a democratic band, but with the loss of Bobby Gillespie - and the Reids’ subsequent dominance of the recording studio - it’s doubly evident in the musical direction. The classic cannonball snares of the ‘80s drum machine - and
actual hi-hat sounds for the first time - crash through the barriers of Gillespie’s minimalist stand-up routine, and the acoustic atmospheres of “Deep One Perfect Morning” offer the sort of caring, tonal respite vital to the band’s evolution. They also reflect a more subtle shift away from the days of flailing through a set without a care, or retreading the violent expression of humanity with a simplistic charm. It’s still a typical Jesus and Mary Chain record, with the same economic chord progressions, same basic rhythm sections and same efficient guitar leads. It’s just not ‘
Psychocandy 2.0’, as people may have expected. Instead, it’s a nuanced approach to a softer side of the Reids, determined to prioritise song over style without drastically diluting the “too cool to care” attitude they popularised - even as tracks like “Down on Me” and “Fall” cling to the band’s shambolic roots.
If there’s anything that testifies to the staying power of
Darklands, it’s the album’s delicate balance between the antipathy of old and surprisingly optimistic romance.
Psychocandy went in a single direction as a whole, with the gloom and viciousness of a motorcycle crash - especially considering they wrote a song
about dying in a motorcycle crash. In contrast,
Darklands takes a distinct pleasure in creating its own light at the end of the tunnel. William Reid’s turns on the microphone often regress to nihilistic ideals and broad strokes of the world, “as sure as life means nothing / and all things end in nothing.” Jim, on the other hand, opposes his brother, balancing the scales with a gentle, crooning “There’s something warm in everything / I know there’s something good about you.” The world may still be bleak to the Jesus and Mary Chain, but they have never been brutish, one-dimensional caricatures. The Reids are complex,
vulnerable men like the rest of us, and
Darklands goes a long way in establishing this.
Duality, once again, defines the Jesus and Mary Chain. However, it shifts from lying within the music to lying within the brothers themselves. There’s always a fight going on in the Reids’ world; it’s just not against the audience at this moment, and this respite allows us to fully take in the grim beauty of it. If the band is the equivalent of a tornado,
Darklands is how they sound in the eye of the storm. They’ve never sounded better.
