Familiarity breeds warmth; such is the problem faced by The Jesus And Mary Chain, whose mega-hits ‘Just Like Honey’ and ‘Happy When It Rains’ hit BBC 6 Music’s daytime playlist with the cosy regularity of worn-out slippers. Time’s slow defanging of this influential fuzz-pop institution makes it easy to forget that the brothers Jim and William Reid, co-founders of Chain, had an air of genuine threat about them when they emerged from the depressed environs of East Kilbride and assaulted the sensibilities of music fans everywhere.

Case in point is the band’s notorious 15-minute gigs in 1985 which provoked riots from the crowd, in part because of the anarchic sound enveloping their senses but mostly because the briefness of the shows infuriated paying punters into a frenzy. The Reids stood on stage like Gilbert & George with sunglasses, unsmiling and disengaged as they unleashed ear-aching squalls of feedback and distortion. This was surf rock given two black eyes and a broken nose by the post-punk scene, what their manager, Alan McGee, would call ‘art as terrorism’.

Now 40 years into their career, the band have proven more resilient than their explosive youthful energy might have suggested, mainly because they had the tunes to back up their braggadocio. Their latest album, Glasgow Eyes, set for release on Friday 8 March, is a celebration of sorts as the elder statesmen of racket-making mark four decades in the business. To help you celebrate, we’ve cherry picked a few of The Jesus And Mary Chain’s must-listen albums, some deep cuts, and the LPs that are better excised from the Chain canon.

Where to start 

It may be almost 40 years old, but the youthful exuberance of Chain’s debut Psychocandy (1985) still feels like a violent slobberknocker, each skreigh of high-frequency chaos committing the stupefying delirium of concussion to record. That the album propelled the Reids to mainstream popularity belies the truth about this vaunted classic: behind the caterwauling sound spikes and machine gun chord changes are classically structured rock tunes in the vein of The Ramones and, in their more insouciant moments, The Stooges. 

In an era when synths were storming the charts, the Chain doubled down on guitars while seemingly trying to break the concept of music altogether. In an interview with The Guardian, Jim claimed, ‘Psychocandy was us trying to fix everything that was wrong with the music scene, so if it sounded the opposite of the diarrhoea that was pumping out of the radio at the time, job done.’ Album opener ‘Just Like Honey’ remains both the band’s calling card and a curious outlier on Psychocandy, its lyrics and undeniably romantic hook in stark contrast to the apocalyptic fervour surrounding it. 

Standing firm in the eye of the storm is follow-up, Darklands (1987), which amplified the best qualities of Psychocandy (the surf rock chic, the unshakeable sensation that a fist will emerge from your speakers and spark you in the jaw) and cranked them up to 11. Jim had perfected his Joey Ramone-alike vocal timbre, while luscious tracks like ‘Some Candy Talking’ and ‘Darklands’ delivered on the promise of ‘Just Like Honey’ and provided the blueprint for thousands of anthem-chasing indie bands for decades to come. Anarchy isn’t the vital quality here, replaced as it was by the self-assuredness of songwriters refining their craft.

Where to continue 

Decades of hard living were catching up with the Reids as the new millennium barrelled into view. The band split in typically explosive fashion after a drunken fall out between the brothers during a gig in Los Angeles, with Jim later remarking ‘After each tour we wanted to kill each other, and after the final tour we tried’. The writing was on the wall in Munki (1998), which sounds like a band consumed by a darkness of its own making. ‘Perfume’ remains the druggiest song they ever produced, at a time when the brothers’ substance abuse was overwhelming them, and it’s indicative of the rest of the album, which pokes and prods at psychedelic stoner rock until it resembles the distended horror of a fun house mirror. 

Its release was met with a shrug of the shoulders from a public more interested in the latest fracas between Damon Albarn and Noel Gallagher, but Munki has proven to be ahead of its time, acting as a precursor to the doomy noise-pop of late-2000s acts like iceage, PAWS and Sky Ferreira (who would appear on the band's later album, Damage And Joy). 

Taking on a more sensitive register is Stoned & Dethroned (1994), in which the Reids unhook their distortion pedals and whip out their acoustic guitars for a spot of soulful balladry. Album highlight and fan favourite is ‘Sometimes Always’, featuring the wispy vocals of Mazzy Star’s mercurial lead, Hope Sandoval. It is, unlike the rest of their back catalogue, openly sweet in both words and sounds, letting the mask of their Wayfarers slip to reveal a romantic sensibility. 

What to avoid

In the years since their comeback, The Chain have become the torchbearers of a sound uniquely their own, with all the conservative trappings that implies. Comeback vehicle Damage And Joy (2017) emerged with the air of business as usual, continuing along the path trodden by Honey’s Dead and Stoned And Dethroned. It’s not a bad album by any means – in fact, the psych drone of ‘Los Feliz (Blues And Greens)’ and the robot rock insistence of ‘Presidici (Et Chapaquiditch)’ fizz with a vital energy – but it is an inessential one, an act spinning their wheel instead of reinventing it. 

Facing a similar problem is Automatic (1989), the out-and-out dud of the lot. Where Darklands was a bold expansion of Psychocandy’s vision, Automatic is a reheating of it, each song a cloying parody of self-satisfied cool and thudding repetition. Those faltering steps are mirrored in the production, which is fossilised in a 1980s tinniness which could be mistaken for cock rock at the album’s lowest ebb (‘Her Way Of Praying’, we’re looking at you). In between its misguided gestures towards Americana, The Joshua Tree-style stadium bangers and (oh dear) boogie-woogie is album gem ‘Head On’, a pulsing indie banger with enough build to hold up a Boeing 747. Beyond that, this is a rare attempt to follow the herd from a band known for their contrarian impulse. 

Glasgow Eyes is released by Fuzz Club on Friday 22 March; The Jesus And Mary Chain are on tour until Saturday 30 March; main picture: Steve Gullick.