***1989's Automatic is the third album from Glasgow alternative rock institution and was engineered by ALAN MOULDER. At this point in their career, the JESUS & MARY CHAIN was essentially a duo—brothers JIM and WILLIAM REID and a drum machine. The dark, twisted pop—sometimes soaked in feedback, sometimes pounded out with drum-machine backing—of Automatic contains their most successful single up to that point, "Head On" (later covered by the Pixies). Pitchfork wrote in 2006: "Conventional wisdom wrongly calls this the dud. With the band reduced to the brothers only, things go artificial: the drum machine is foregrounded, the bass is played on keyboards, the feedback’s on vacation. In that space, the Reids take their biggest shot at doing full-on pop, something that feels like a career peak."