Contrarianism -- post(post)-punk edition

Received opinion I'm delighted to refute:

*Matos and Thomas are wrong: the Jesus & Mary Chain's worst songs are their early "classics." "Just Like Honey" is really pretty, I guess (Lost in Translation, thank you), but "You Trip Me Up" does not make me miss the Ramones (whom I'm not fond of anyway). Their mid-period college radio heyday holds up the best: "Happy When It Rains, "April Skies" (both of which are the same song really), "Sidewalking," the glorious "Head On," and their narcoleptic Hope Sandoval collaboration "Sometimes Always." Still, to claim that JAMC were a major band is simply laughable. The best thing anyone's ever said about them is Rob Sheffield's remark that Depeche Mode are JAMC with synths instead of guitars: they signify on that level of histrionics.

*Eighties Wire -- the edition employing gauche synthesizers, sequencers, and reducing Robert Gotobed to a tinny drum machine -- fascinates me in a way that the dangerous, seedy seventies Wire (like the mostly dismal 154) doesn't. I can't understand why "Kidney Bingos" makes me tear up -- especially in the fade-out, where Graham Lewis' near-incomprehensible basso harmonizes with Colin Newman's cuddly vocal. When critics write about the perversion in accessibility, I'd cite this as a prime example.