If The Jesus and Mary Chain’s first album, Psychocandy, was a genre-defining statement of intent—fusing early-’60s pop with ear-splitting distortion and feedback—the band’s second album offered an equally strong rebuke to the aural assault that first made their name. Having parted ways with swashbuckling manager Alan McGee, who famously called the JAMC “art as terrorism,” the brothers William and Jim Reid were clearly looking for other avenues down which they could follow their Stooges-meets-Shangri-Las musical muse. That the songs could hold their own without the deafening volume was something the brothers had suspected for some time. There is an apocryphal story that in order to counter the “new Sex Pistols” hyperbole that came with their initial rush of fame, JAMC planned to ditch the unrelenting sound of their volatile (and occasionally violent) live shows for a series of surprise acoustic sets opening for Sonic Youth. Those gigs never took place, but had they occurred, it likely would have sounded a lot like “About You,” Darklands’ plaintive acoustic closer. That is not to say that Darklands is merely JAMC unplugged. But the group’s previous fixation with the artful noise of John Cale-era Velvet Underground is fully supplanted by a Lou Reed-inspired tunefulness that had previous played second viola to the sonic tempest. Without the persistent caterwauling, the music on Darklands bolsters, rather than competes with, the tunes. Plus, swapping drummer Bobby Gillespie’s standing Moe Tuckerisms for a Roland TR-707 drum machine on songs like “April Skies” and “Happy When It Rains” gives both a driving groove more likely to instigate a rave-up than a riot. Upon Darklands’ release, many observers (including the Reids themselves) conceded that compromises had to be made in order for the band to find a way forward. Decades later, Psychocandy is still The Jesus and Mary Chain’s calling card. But Darklands paved the way for a much longer career than would have been likely had the band simply replicated the cacophony that made them famous.