TALKING FAST ON THE EDGE OF NOTHING

just a bit of a blurb:
i recently marveled at how all these years i have missed out on a painfully obvious pattern in my taste for music. aside from the britpop glamrock bands i love so much, i'm also often drawn to bands experimenting with feedback treatment in their sounds. From my teenage memories of The Jesus and Mary Chain [JAMC henceforth], to more current likes of The Raveonettes. With careful selection, these bands produce a delicious white noise which, if you give it a chance, will paint dreams for you (and also send your mother running from your room with her hands covering her ears, screaming). so there, back when we were all 16, that's killing two birds with one stone. perfect.

"Before they [JAMC] came along, many people still assumed that in order to make aggressive, energetic noises, the members of rock bands had to actually move around, do guitar windmills, and look engaged. The JAMC did not like this situation, because those poses tended to be either uncool or boring, and often made one look like a complete twat. But after a brief scientific study of their equipment, it came to the JAMC’s attention that electric guitars, when paired with high amplifier volume and harmonic distortion, could create feedback, thereby producing aggressive noises mostly on their own, and freeing their actual players to stand around looking half dead, depressed, and generally too contemptuous and disgusted to really bother playing."-Pitchfork, Nitsuh Abebe, August 04, 2006

I recall buying my first JAMC ep in 1997 at Tower Records in Pacific Plaza. Good days.
Everything was so new and fresh.

a random trivia for JAMC listeners:
-the opening chords for Happy When It Rains (Darklands) and Something's Wrong (PsychoCandy) is *exactly* the same.

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This is a love song.

Happy When It Rains

Step back and watch the sweet thing
breaking everything she sees
she can take my darkest feeling
tear it up till i'm on my knees
plug into her electric cool
where things bend and break
and shake to the rule

talking fast couldn't tell me something
i would shed my skin for you
talking fast on the edge of nothing
i would break my back for you
don't know why, don't know why
things vaporise and rise to the sky

and we tried so hard
and we looked so good
and we lived our lives in black
but something about you felt like pain
you were my sunny day rain
you were the clouds in the sky
you were the darkest sky
but your lips spoke gold and honey
that's why i'm happy when it rains
i'm happy when it pours

looking at me enjoying something
that feels like
feels like pain
to my brain

and if i tell you something
you take me back to nothing
i'm on the edge of something
you take me back
and i'm happy when it rains.