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The Jesus & Mary Chain: Honey's Dead (Def American) ***½

Ira Robbins, Rolling Stone, 14 May 1992

AN APPETITE for self-destruction, any psych major can tell you, is a cry for attention. So when Jim Reid of the Jesus and Mary Chain wheezes: "I wanna die just like Jesus Christ... I wanna die just like JFK... I wanna die on a sunny day" — lines that kept 'Reverence' (the first single from Honey's Dead) off British TV — he's obviously just jerking society's chain. And when he and brother William later run the same lyrics over a stretch of Jonathan Richman's 'Roadrunner', the song's death wish dissolves into self-mockery.

Total word count of piece: 308

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