The Jesus and Mary Chain
Upside Down

THE REVIEW

A dense veil of sharp, biting feedback covers a linear, sweet, catchy melody, in full pop style, in short; and then you think: "Who the hell ruined this beautiful vinyl?".

But no, you have to change your mind, no one scratched the vinyl, and your turntable is not broken. It's the Jesus and Mary Chain, a Scottish band among the most important precursors and proponents of the shoegaze genre.

"Upside down/Vegetable Man" (1984, Creation) is a 2-sides single, the band's first. It comprises two tracks: "Upside down" and "Vegetable man", the latter being a cover of a song that Syd Barrett wrote for the Floyds.

Both are very short tracks (about 6 minutes total duration), of very simple structure, whose apparent order is disrupted by a powerful layer of feedback, an endless and inhuman scream.

The melody then takes a back seat - buried by increasingly frequent guitar interventions - until it sets and eventually disappears.
Six minutes that seem endless, which almost become a torture for the ears.

A mix between Lou Reed and his "Metal Machine Music", the Cure, Joy Division, '80s pop rock and - in the case of "Vegetable Man" - some punk blues elements; there are also psychedelic references à la Spacemen 3, or My Bloody Valentine.

Two prophetic tracks, precursors of the noise-pop style that will characterize the Scottish band in the following decades.