Since you can't get more than a paragraph or so into a review of Psychocandy without bringing up feedback and noise, I figured I would just attack it head on. I used to hate noise and loud volumes, and I still generally avoid them when I can. I have always hated being around the kind of people who malevolently pop balloons at parties, play music ridiculously loud in their cars, and are incapable of sitting still and being quiet for more than five seconds at a time. Moreover, I was genuinely nervous the first time I listened to the Velvet Underground since I had read so much about the 'noisy' aspects of their music. The idea of feedback scared me for a long time after I accidentally touched the strings of my electric guitar to the amplifier while showing it to a friend shortly after I got for a birthday and a horrendous, deafening, indescribable racket erupted into my ears and body. At some point, though, I began to like noise, feedback, and distortion, probably when I started to hate the world, myself, and other people. I even got around to 'playing' feedback with my guitar. All that said, I still don't like noise music. I have occasional dalliances with it, sure, but I usually require some kind of modifier to go along with 'noise', whether it be 'noise-pop' or 'pretty noise.'I figured I would just lay all of that out there because Psychocandy, despite the 20+ years of criticism since its release, is still referred to as 'noise pop.' And going into the album with that assumption (and the deadpan recommendation from a record store clerk that it was his "favorite album for about five years"), I was misled. I've been struggling with the album for a few months now, and the curve of my experience with it is pretty much identical to my original relationship with noise and feedback. On first listen I was kind of terrified of the album. It seemed so bleak and menacing, all nihilism and skull throttling bursts of white noise. I didn't listen to it for awhile, afraid to admit to myself or anyone that I didn't like such a 'classic' album because the feedback scared me. Empowered by alcohol, I have since made repeat excursions into the cityscape of Psychocandy and have finally come around to it. It's a great album, but it's great more for what it sounds like than what it is.
See, Psychocandy is not 'noise pop.' But that doesn't help, does it?? Genre distinctions are entirely meaningless and arbitrary; they're shorthand for referring to a general "feel" or "kind" of music when we're too rushed (or lazy) to completely lay down the full story. Allow me to explain what I mean, then. 'Noise pop', to me, is music that allows--wait for it--"noise" and "pop" to co-exist peacefully. This can be pop music with experimental/noisy undertones (see: Deerhoof, Sonic Youth, et. al.) or noise as pop music (see the ethereal, beatiful noise of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless). However, Psychocandy is much more noise than pop most of the time. What little pop there is to be had isn't the 'Beach Boys' kind of pop reviews often refer to it as. Rather, it's more like the Velvet Underground, a druggy, languid pop with a singer who doesn't care. At the same time, most of the songs have a shrieking torrent of noise either constantly on tap or waiting to be poured for the listener. This isn't noise, feedback, and distortion as an enhancement or interesting texture to music. Rather, it's noise as an impediment to enjoying the song that is trapped underneath.
The sad truth about Psychocandy is that, without all that howling noise, nobody would really care about the album. Only 'Just Like Honey' stands up as a classic pop song with or without noise, and it's one of the least feedback-drenched tunes from the album. Without the incredible aural headache you're exposed to on 'Never Understand', all you'd be left with is a sub-par take on Joy Division/Velvet Underground inspired British 80s music. It's telling that the band never recorded another album like this, and the shoegazer bands who are its obvious descendants crafted music that was much more successful at blending 'noise' and 'pop' in a symbiotic way. You can tell they looked more closely to 'Just Like Honey' and 'Inside Me'--which, in retrospect, sound really similar, down to the drumbeat--for inspiration, music that was still challenging and 'noisy' but not so excruciating and forceful about it.
And yet...remember when I said earlier that I liked Psychocandy more for what it sounds like than what it is?? Well, Psychocandy was like a shot-across-the-bow for the 80s underground scene. You're very unlikely to hear an album quite like it from this era, and its sheer extreme-ness garnered it endless talk and debate in British music magazines at the time. Listening to Psychocandy at loud volume is really the only way to hear it for what it truly is: a noisy monolith, a middle finger to polite-and-proper British pop music, and a reptilian-brain-stem endurance test. Psychocandy is an album you experience as much as you hear, and even if you don't like noise music, it's hard to argue with its committment. The Jesus & March Chain weren't fooling around when they recorded this music. The feedback and noise are actually more extreme than that of the Velvet Underground; even if the resultant songs are nowhere near as good or enduring, the sheer sonic assault of the album is brilliant. I mean, is it even music?? It's the sort of album that makes me reconsider what 'music' can be, and what it means to 'enjoy' something. I don't 'enjoy' watching Silence of the Lambs or Schindler's List, yet they're incredible movies. Or should I say "experiences"?? Like them, Psychocandy is not enjoyable in the way I typically associate with its artform, but it is an incredible experience.
To be succinct, what Psychocandy is isn't important, because it's not 'noise pop' and the songs buried below the noise are mostly forgettable. But what Psychocandy sounds like is important because it's an incredible piece of sound violence, nihilistic and painful, that is like nothing you've heard. I don't like it as a piece of music made up of discrete songs to enjoy, but as a slab of noise to be played at loud volume so that I feel it in my whole body. Amazing.
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