December 30, 1989
- STAYED AT #1:3 Weeks
In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.
"Cool" is a subjective thing with no fixed definition, but at least to me, no band has ever sounded cooler than the Jesus And Mary Chain. The Scottish group made its name by writing downcast bubblegum jams and then hiding their hooks in layers of screeching feedback, which is a cool thing to do. But the Mary Chain got even cooler when they got rid of the feedback and found different approaches to their seething but starry-eyed garage rock. For their third album, 1989's Automatic, Jim and William Reid, the two brothers behind the Jesus And Mary Chain, did almost everything on their own, replacing human bassists and drummers with sequencers and drum machines. In the process, they connected their own music, however unintentionally, to the things that were happening in rap, industrial, and acid house around the same time. See? Fucking cool.
Critics did not like Automatic when it came out, but the album gave the Jesus And Mary Chain their only #1 hit on the Billboard Modern Rock charts. I didn't know anything about the album's divided reputation when I bought a used cassette copy of Automatic for three or four bucks a few years later. I was 12 years old, and I don't think I'd ever heard the band. I bought the record because I could afford it and because the Jesus And Mary Chain were on the Lollapalooza '92 tour -- playing the main stage between Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and probably feeling hopelessly out of place. (I didn't get to go to Lollapalooza until 1995, but I obsessively kept track of those early lineups.)