"21 singles"

this is one what we wrote in 2002. sam from tasty was once kind enough to give it special mention, and as sam from tasty is a don, that made us very proud.

"well well well. as we exclusively dreamt about 18 months ago (wonder what freud would have made of that), the mary chain have a singles compilation out, which basically means they have released in cd format one of my favourite compilation tapes of all time, lovingly put together from a myriad of different formats of these tunes i grew up with. and though, as would be expected, the chronological approach means that the very pick of the crop are the first clutch of incendiary screamers, the record works really well in charting a natural evolution which never quite succumbed to temporary trends, even if ultimately they authored something rather more derivative than the initial blaze of feedback glory might ever have suggested.

it would be morally wrong to do anything other than start with the raging, rampaging early stuff. "upside down" even now induces toe tapping, head spinning joy every time a new bleat of feedback darts into the mix. if you've ever read the fantastic cavanagh tome on creation (which sparkles in part not least due to its depiction of the j&mc) you will have read the story of its recording, deep beneath waterloo station, with william reid sneaking back in to the studio to add layer upon layer of noise. listening to the record you can feel the trains charging overhead, the bass reverberating around the tiny studio, the playful anarchy of every fader being slammed up to ten and every remaining guitar track being filled with the type of wicked, wonderful white noise that best sums up the rollercoaster emotions of every true relationship. it's why, even though we are no longer the teenagers who first marvelled at their racket, the mary chain remain one of the greatest authors of love songs ever.

no sooner does "upside down" taper away than its place is taken by "never understand" - and from the moment the snare crashes in to harness the opening guitar SCREEEEOW it is just soul-affirmingly luminescent. put to one side the fact that every set of exams i ever did culminated in me going back to my bedroom, garret room, studio, bedsit or wherever to put this song on at maximum volume, feeling the stress dissipating as the neighbours swore. this was a song that ought to have gone top 5, where the melodies are hardly hidden, but which found like love's young dream that the public are fickle and had decided that stock aitken and waterman songs didn't give you instant migraine when you listened to them on your headphones, so somehow our own conviction that temporary illness was a small price to pay for such genius was a minority view. in other words, chart position: negligible. even by the time of "you trip me up" (track 3), we were beginning to realise that our na�ve fantasy of all bands sounding like the mary chain, and noisepop inevitably gatecrashing the charts and displacing the pap, was beginning to look misplaced. not that any of us cared, not least the mary chain themselves - at the third attempt they had, at last, written the perfect love song, hung on such an obvious, but so apposite metaphor, with jim reid imploring "i'd like to trip you up" - when luther or alexander would have settled for "i want to make you fall in love with me" but that just wouldn't have fitted so well with the seven shades of noise that surrounded his declaration - and the ultimate use of the greatest mary chain trick - the "additional tranche of feedback" which always came in at the moment that the listener's heart TRULY needed wrenching, and tended to pin me to the spot.

as you'll have guessed, we could probably wax lyrical-ish about the whole cd, but we hope the above gives you an idea of what the mary chain meant - no, mean - to us, and this includes not only their early peel sessions but also the whole of "psychocandy", which fleshed out the twin themes of romance and unadulterated clamour. we do mean it when we say that every one's a winner. we can pick personal highlights that punctuated certain stages of growing up - "april skies" which struck a blow for us laughed-at, messed-up kids in school by reaching the top 10, however much people decried it as "sell out" when perhaps it was just evolution; first hearing the delicious "sometimes, always" on the radio in northern ireland, in the car, and that warmth in knowing that even though hope sandoval's sultry vocal was a novel departure, the whole song still oozed mary-chainness (as well as the solace of hearing jim's voice come in to accompany her);... then at college, "reverence" - comedically banned by the bbc, with its only vaguely-dancey stylings meaning that uniquely amongst tunes from 1992 it hasn't dated - that went into the top 10 the same week the wedding present went into the top 20; "cracking up", the fabulous and wrongly-overlooked comeback on creation which soundtracked our own halycon summer of 1998, watching the world cup and wasting warm afternoons on clapham common... there are no bad tracks on here, just a journey from feedback ballads through almost-chart mellow to true americana to nineties pop noise, with the odd near-acoustic deviation.

some might say that they should have split up in 1987, left their legend for the future to rediscover, gone out in a haze of glory; but more than most bands, they retained the capacity to inspire, even when there were signs they were treading water they always seemed to re-emerge with top notch tunes and a new twist. we remember listening to "i love rock and roll" (and they did), the last song here and contrarian companion to tune 19, "i hate rock and roll" (and they did) - dumbfoundedly staring at each other as the horns came in, until one of the crew broke the silence by saying "i'm going to let them have that". they really could do anything."