I've always hated the overall sound of Automatic, which sort of ruins even my favourite songs off it. I remember GMKU going on a bit of Mary Chain marathon a few months ago and really rating it. I just can't get beyond the overall sound. And some of it (UV Ray) just makes me cringe. Psychocandy and Darklands may have been naive and a bit obvious at times but I don't recall them ever making me cringe. Definitely their 'difficult third album', for me.

They got steadly more cringeworthy to me... Stoned and Dethroned is utterly unlistenable to me. And the only thing I can narrow it down to is less noise and more pop-song structures. Psychocandy is the noisiest and the least predictable, which I guess is why I love it

Another thing is that i've always thought there's a quite sleazy sexiness to Psychocandy. It was slightly toned down on Darklands but with Automatic, one of the most celibate sounding Rock albums I've heard, it seemed to have vanished entirely.

castration seems like a trend of theirs... castration of their sound and castration of its meaning.

They did what many great '80s alt bands did around the tine of Automatic: started sounding ordinary and bored. For other instances of this tendency toward "End-of-80s-Castration" see the Replacements, Husker Du, REM, Dinosaur Jr, etc.

Few bands were able to survive the "rise" of alternative music without turning into ball-less imitations of themselves. Sonic Youth, Fugazi, and (dare I say) the Flaming Lips being the three that come to mind. Many will disagree about the Lips, but it's true. Ignoring their music videos and ill-conceived attempts at commercial success, which lead to a near death by one-hit-wonderdom, the early 90s were actually a great time for them, but mostly because they turned into a completely different band.

But SY and Fugazi (and MBV, for about 18the months) are the only high profile 80s Indie groups that sounded as good or better after the alt "revolution" than they did before without simply becoming radio friendly pop groups.

Thanks for this.

You're quite welcome.

severian's right doe... the co-optation of 80s post-punk by the mainstream music industry may have been great for nirvana and pixies and U2, but it dethorned sonic youth, fugazi, and jesus and mary chain... genres like hardcore that couldn't survive being dethroned died off entirely. it was exactly what new wave did to punk rock a decade earlier and its just as shitty

Maybe you forget that Psychocandy, their debut album, entered the UK charts, when they were quite a big concern, very high for an album of its kind. And that was a number of years before the alternative revolution indie rock historian Severian is talking about. Also, Pixies started charting in the UK top ten ever since they released ''Doolittle'',which was released a couple of years before the revolution they allegedly weren't able to survive creatively.

Individual success has almost nothing to do with it... It was good luck that Pixies and Jesus and Mary Chain got some limelight before their music got castrated. I also never said that Pixies were unable to survive the "revolution"... They're one of its biggest success stories

I think you're argument is confusing because you're confusing musical history with personal taste. What constitutes a "success story" in your mind? Commercial success? In which case REM are the biggest "success story" surely?

And Dinosaur are a success story and so are most of the bands you mention because they sold more records after the period you're talking about.

I think your argument could be summed up more easily by saying this:

"I prefer their early stuff".

Sorry, I edited my previous post slightly because when I wrote it I was doing some other stuff and got distracted, so it didn’t read quite right.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to suggest you said that Pixies didn't survive ''the alternative revolution'', I just mentioned Pixies to make another example of another band that enjoyed all that an ambitious indie label was able to offer at the time combined with the distribution a major record company could afford them. This in the UK, where the profitability of Indie was already a reality before the Nirvana revolution.

Post-Nirvana, the major labels themselves suddenly started signing bands that were previously on tiny labels.

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that Severian and yourself are grossly generalising a number of bands that had in many cases starkly different commercial and creative backgrounds by applying the same vicissitudes to all of them while not having done more accurate research.

Edit: and what Pookie said.

This is simply not true. Go and read some early Pixies and Jesus and Mary Chain interviews slowly and you'll be met with people who certainly were up for a little more than a DIY ride, so it hardly makes them simply lucky in their commercial success.

Oh wow I totally missed these reponses! okay:

It's true that as far as Jesus and Mary chain goes, I simply enjoy their earlier stuff more. But what I'm trying to say is that it's no coincidence that bands that started on small labels and moved to bigger ones have underwent very similar stylistic changes. I'm not one to support indie music just because the fact that it's indie gives me a huge boner, but Mary Chain, Pixies, and even Sonic Youth all had, in my opinion, worse albums after signing to a major label. Nirvana too could have been way better if their label had allowed them to pursue the dry, lo-fi feel that Cobain wanted after Nevermind. So all of this amounts to a general principle I have that indie bands do best when they stay indie.

I generally think you're right although JAMC might be a bad example, considering their debut album was effectively released by Warner Brothers. But yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of examples of indie bands that did improve after signing to a major but I'm struggling to think of any.

Well Canadians got to see Jessica Pare (Mrs. Megan Draper) sing at a recent J&MC concert.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-as3DIsgqZE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjmv_ysp9WA

im moving to new york next week to get my master's, i was planning on getting tickets to the manhattan show