A sinful sound echoes in your ears as you listen to The Psychocandies. The name lured me in. I thought of The Jesus And Mary Chain. The only thing The Psychocandies has in common with TJAMC is that both of them make beautiful noise. The Pyschocandies may remind you a little of Psychocandy- it’s the reverb and the distorted vocals. It’s my weakness.

I don’t know much about The Psychocandies. I read that it’s just one person, but it doesn’t matter. I think they’re from France. They make you think you’re loitering in dark alleys in Paris on a damp evening. Watching the rain fall under a flickering street light. They’re the romanticised version of the city. They’re the soundtrack to what’s going on in your head, they pour out from your nightmares. It never sounded so good.

There’s quite a lot to delve in with regards to their back catalogue. The most recent came out possibly in the summer of last year? The songs sound like they could be the soundtrack to your nightmares. There’s a brilliant decadent sound that flows through. They make you feel as if something is chasing you, or maybe you’re the one doing the hunting and the haunting. The hypnotic grooves but you in a trance, especially on the From The Depths release.

The songs on this record are loud, brilliantly intrusive (not in a bad way) and set the mind off. Everything is heightened on this record, especially on You Got No Soul (the alt version). It’s a really, really in your face kind of song. If you play it as loud as you can stand, you’ll probably end up deaf for about half hour- then you’ll find yourself doing it again. And again. I think if you were to go to one of their shows, you’d leave partially deaf. That’s not always a bad thing.

The Psychocandies will give you the shakes, you’ll go hot and cold. You won’t settle when you listen to them- you’ll be on edge. They’ll plague your mind in the most glorious way imaginable. It’s the kind of music I’d want to make- I’d want to make people feel uneasy but in a way that’s not scary or threatening. There would be something to lure the listener in, and that’s exactly what they do. They keep you guessing, wondering what’s going to hit you next. Any remotely decent band can do this, and The Psychocandies do it in a way that leave you wanting more, and more. They remind me of The Vacant Lots in that way you know. For me, The Vacant Lots are up there with some of the greatest bands of all time and after seeing them live, I realised it was the sheer intensity of the sound that made me a fan years ago. That’s how I’m heading with The Psychocandies. There is something so effortlessly intense about them, so dark and so full of curiosity for the listener.

You can spend way too long try to dissect your reasons for loving something, but sometimes when you do this it makes you love the band even more. Does that make sense? You keep listening to them, over and over. As you listen, you find new things to love and appreciate about them. You hear a new noise within them. That new noise just fires you up and makes you hear things differently. It all sounds bigger. As I listen to The Psychocandies, I can’t really pin point where the sound takes me. I know it’s desolate and I know it’s dark, and for me that’s entirely comforting.

There’s something about this secluded and sacred sound that makes you connect more than you thought you could.