The Jesus and Mary Chain's 2008 Rhino four-disc box set
The Power of Negative Thinking: B-Sides & Rarities, collects all of the influential Scottish noise-pop band's various B-side singles, cover songs, and sundry demos in one terrific package. Fans of
JAMC who already own the band's albums should be pleased to see that none of the original album tracks are included here. For those who don't own them, Rhino's 2006 bonus disc reissues of
Psychocandy,
Darklands,
Automatic,
Honey's Dead, and
Stoned & Dethroned is the place to start. However, in many ways
The Power of Negative Thinking is a more honest portrait of
JAMC than even the studio albums reveal. Often mischaracterized as gloomy, goth rock misanthropes -- only partly true --
JAMC were in truth huge fans of '60s sunshine pop, surf rock, and even hip-hop and aspired to a kind of D.I.Y.
Phil Spector Wall of Sound aesthetic that found them substituting
Spector's strings and horns with walls of feedbacking guitar. These are rough demos meant to capture the Reid brothers' raw creative vision of rock music that -- as guitarist
Jim Reid says in the liner notes -- had, "the pop sensibilities of
the Shangri-Las, but with the production values of
the Birthday Party." In that sense, we get
JAMC from their dreamy lo-fi punk roots with the 1983 drum machine-driven demo for "Up Too High" and 1984's sludgy feedback-laden "Upside Down," to their time as '90s alt rock icons on such pristinely polished efforts like shimmering 1992 ballad "Why Do You Want Me?" and the catchy folk-rock of 1994's "Something I Can't Have." We even get one of the few non-Reid entries in bassist
Ben Lurie's pop nugget "Rocket." Also enlightening are such giddy cover songs as
JAMC's version of
Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love,"
Prince's "Alphabet Street," and
the Temptations' "My Girl" which purportedly
JAMC were so drunk during the recording of they could barely hold their instruments. It's also true that the Reid brothers were big fans of
Bob Dylan and that many of these songs were written on acoustic guitar. Not surprisingly, here we get blissfully melodic acoustic versions of "Just Like Honey" and "Taste of Cindy," which actually come fairly close to fulfilling
JAMC's
Spector-ish aspirations. Ultimately,
The Power of Negative Thinking isn't the whole
JAMC story, but it's the whole story behind the scenes and A-side singles, and sometimes the B-sides. Even better. ~ Matt Collar