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Rating: September 1989: Automatic. Please turn on the stereo...
The Reid brothers don their most rock'n'roll attire with a rebellious boldness that captures eyes and ears, unleashing and dripping from those latent and sickly guitars 12 tracks that reek of debris, disobedience, and freshly lit cigarettes...
I watch the last 30 seconds in the mirror, smile at myself, then grab the keys, I'm down in 5 seconds. Waking up was tough. In the earliest memories, 'Half Way To Crazy' with its brazenly cloying and beautiful chant buzzing in my ears and 'Drop' illuminating an endless dawn. This car still smells of smoke and party. Turn the key, and 'Automatic' by the Jesus And Mary Chain starts again. Last night, this concentrated dose of rock'n'roll, scratches, sex, and abrasions kept us company for a long time. I remember myself with 'Between Planets' with its grudgingly bubblegum rhythm, those crushing electric spanks, that bitter taste on the lips and the glass in hand smiling at it... I didn't even know who they were.
I was just looking at her shoulders and her eyes while Jim and William with their rough voices and those sticky, sick words unconsciously brought us closer. Perhaps I had drunk too much, but I felt that damn irresistible drum pounding inside my chest in 'Head On'. It was already in my head. Another look, another smile, and it was done, I would find myself dancing with him this other beautiful decadent bad copy of 'April Skies'... I always say it's the fault of the drum skins if I get that sudden emptiness in my stomach... Then comes 'Take It', bothersome and suffocating, with that pasty and murky proceeding. The air in the place is hot and stale, making you want to take it out on these damned Scots and their 'Automatic' if you feel so dazedly fine tonight.
They don't give you time to catch your breath with those sticky riffs, those viscous melodies, and those damnably seditious tones. Another one of these, and I swear, I won't drink anymore. He's always there looking at me, and we look at each other and don't stop. Through the anthracite smoke blanket drawing in front of us, I don't know what hidden calls 'Blues From A Gun' starts, worn and frayed with its feverishly danceable sound, and we don't detach anymore. Stuck in each other, glued to one another. Only his words thundering in our heads, dragged and tense like our hands. Then the rusty rock of 'UV Ray' with its transversal electronic incursions and of 'Gimme Hell', like sandpaper on skin, of 'Her Way Of Praying', dark and overpowering in its simplicity and then again those choruses... those words that seem like blades in the flesh, cut tongues, lost souls.
We exit that filthy hole dazed on the feverish and muddy notes of 'Here Comes Alice'... 'You got the shakes and it's gonna get worse, don't you know it's all a part of the curse'... maybe it really is a curse but now does it matter? With that smile, where did he want to escape tonight? Foot on the accelerator and yet another cigarette between the lips... 'On the road, under the sky' sang the Reid brothers. This dirty and sick city of this album we leave behind us, what do you say, eh, honey?? Ahead of us only the deserted road, dusty but dazzling with dilapidated neon signs. What more could one need when you know those eyes are fixed on you? Maybe 'Coast To Coast' blasting on the stereo or burning in the stomach; urban, drugged, humid like a reckless one-way drive... slicing through the soul of this unexpectedly crazy night... of this city that smells of earth and debris.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Coast to Coast (04:13)
Feels like something pumping through my veins
I got the junk gun fever sinking to my brain
Feels like God in heaven's gone insane
I got a cat scratch engine takes me on the road
Wheels get rolling back to the world I know
Takes me just as far as I can go
I got my senses strung out to the sky
That desert city's got me reaching high
Here I come here I come
Junk town nothing got to keep it coming
Hipshake gunning kick start and I'm running
Just don't make it guess you got to fake it
Here I come here I come
On the road
Under a sky
Coast to coast
04 Between Planets (03:27)
Suicide standing sucking in her cheeks
Too much lips and too much eyes
Hasn't slept for weeks
She don't know just where it goes
Jackie T said she saw death
She's done it fifty ways
But she's been off that medicine
For almost fifteen days
She don't know just where it goes
So turn around and run back where you're from
You can't get on
Don't shake those hips don't bite those lips
Just keep it hid
Come on now you gave it away
And all the friends you had got paid
Come on now you were never that shy
And that's no way for you to say bye bye
Baby you drive me crazy
Don't come around here no more
06 Her Way of Praying (03:46)
Fall to her call on a Saturday night
She's got the hip dippin' trick of all time done right
She's got her lips sticking tight to her find tonight
She's keeping time keeping time with the mystery rhyme
And she's crazy to want me to taunt me
Deep on the scene she is waiting for me
Like a sin scraping skin she is screaming for me
Hope in hope in the sky she is talking to me
She's keeping time keeping time with the image of me
And she's crazy to want me to taunt me
It's her way of saying a prayer for me
It's her way of saying a prayer for me
It's her way of talking to God for me
It's her way of talking to God for me
It's her way of talking to jesus christ
It's her way of talking to jesus hey
Talking to you now
And I just can't take it anyhow
Talking about your prayer
And I just can't take it anyway
Anyhow I see it
Any kind of way she tells me
All the things I'm trying
Honey ???
07 Head On (04:11)
As soon as I get my head round you
I come around catching sparks off you
I get an electric charge from you
That second hand living it just won't do
And the way I feel tonight
I could die and I wouldn't mind
And there's something going on inside
Makes you want to feel makes you want to try
Makes you want to blow the stars from the sky
I can't stand up I can't cool down
I can't get my head off the ground
As soon as I get my head round you
I come around catching sparks off you
And all I ever got from you
Was all I ever took from you
And the world could die in pain
And I wouldn't feel no shame
And there's nothing holding me to blame
Makes you want to feel makes you want to try
Makes you want to blow the stars from the sky
I'm taking myself to the dirty part of town
Where all my troubles can't be found
11 Drop (01:57)
The way you drop is like a stone
Making out you're flying
But you've just been thrown
Till kingdom comes
And through bitten tongues
These eyes get stung
With every curse that's sung
These twisted times
Can't compare to mine
And heaven knows where loving goes
I should have guessed
When I took that pill
Do I love her still
Well did Jesus kill
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