Richard Verity bought me this in 1987 or '88. It might have been when he came to live with me for what seemed a very long month in August '88. It's still got its cellophane wrapper and £6.99 HMV sticker. Bless him, Richard's given me quite a few of these gifts over the years. And I had a very good dinner with him and Meike a couple of weeks back at their house in Crouch End.
Having got the Mary Chain's first single, I felt it was a statement (yeah, right) not to get any of their subsequent recordings but just sniff haughtily at how they'd lost the original spark and impact. I wasn't so committed to that statement as to receive the gift ungratefully, however, and I'm still glad to have it now.
Stephin Merritt includes it as the 1985 entry in his list of 100 great recordings of the 20th century, and I think I'm right in saying that he refers to it as "the last rock album" (in the same way that, say, The Wild Bunch was often talked about as "the last Western"). The reason I might agree with that is that it makes it possible to discern a kind of formula to the way the sound achieves its intensity. You start with a layer of noise, then you put the catchy tunes and rhythm over that, and, just when the listener thinks they've got what there is to get, you add another layer of squalling noise that promises to take the song into another place.
It's almost as thought they gave away the tricks behind the magic with this album. So people like Loop could follow them, adding detail and footnotes to the sound, but never quite being able to make us suspend our disbelief.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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