Psychocandy

The brothers recorded it in six weeks from March 1985 with the engineer John Loder at Southern Studios, for 17,000 pounds. An earlier attempt with Stephen Street at Island Studios proved fruitless. Jim Reid said Loder, working from a converted garage, set up the desk and told them to do it themselves. The Guardian wrote that the band sampled white noise and feedback and punched it carefully into the mix, and that getting the sound right is why it took six weeks.

Gillespie recorded most of the drums, with John Moore filling in when he was unavailable. Jim Reid sings lead on all but It's So Hard, sung by William. The album was preceded by the singles Never Understand, You Trip Me Up and Just Like Honey. The 1986 CD added Some Candy Talking between Taste of Cindy and Never Understand.

Reviewing it on release, NME's Andy Gill called it a great searing citadel of beauty. It placed second in NME's albums of 1985, third in The Face and fifth in Melody Maker, and reached 31 in the UK and 188 on the US Billboard 200. Pitchfork heard a noise that is thin, trebly and drowned in indistinct reverb, stumbling from lazy beauty on Just Like Honey to frantic noise on Never Understand and almost-bouncy pop on Taste of Cindy. Q placed it 88th in its 100 Greatest British Albums in 2000, Rolling Stone ranked it 268th in 2003, and it appears in the 1001 Albums book.