LOVELESS - my bloody valentine

*I'm repurposing a post from 2016 for some reason. Probably because I just started reading that David Cavanagh book about Creation Records only 25 years late or because I've been listening to LoveLiesCrushing's second LP Xuvetyn from 1996 which is excellent but is highly indebted to Loveless and would not exist without it. I mean when i was 19 in 1991 and this came out I bought the tape and played it to fucking death. Then a couple of months later I saw them twice at The Prince Of Wales in St Kilda. I was so obsessed I made sure I got my hands on Belinda's set list for both nights. That took pride of place on the door of my bedroom wardrobe in the sharehouse I lived in for a few years. Somewhere along the way I lost those lists. I think by about March 1992 I'd listened to my Creation cassette of Loveless so much I couldn't possibly listen to it any more. It wasn't until the early 00s that I heard it again when I found a copy on cd in an op shop which was handy as I no longer had anything to play tapes on. Since then I have the occasional listen skipping the way too overplayed Only Shallow and the previously released Soon and To Here Knows When. I mean those two tracks from Glider and Tremelo respectively had been played to death by the time I got my hands on Loveless. For me there's two classic albums in this era really, Glider and Tremelo combined and Loveless sans those aforementioned tracks...

The deliciously dazed and frenetic bewilderment of Loveless still astounds to this day. 

MY BLOODY VALENTINE - LOVELESS [1991]

Really do I need to spill another word onto a page about the merits of this LP? This recording is one of the most pillaged albums in rock’s history. The Jesus & Mary Chain laid down the blueprint via Phil Spector, The Beach Boys, The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, Dr. Mix & The Remix, Aeroplane Runways and more. Dinosaur Jr., Husker Du and Sonic Youth added the extra flavour and My Bloody Valentine made noise rock at its most beautiful, blurry, melodic, disorientating and come on I have to say it, BLISSED OUT.

Kevin Shields provided his considerably unique guitar talents along with Belinda Butcher. They together did their extraordinary girl/boy vocal thing. The rhythm section was none too shabby either with the aforementioned Deb Googe on her heavy, dubby and sometimes pummelling bass. Colm O'Ciosoig provided the drums as well as occasional sampling/production/engineering duties.

It all began to come together in 1988 with the release of the You Made Me Realise EP and Feed Me With Your Kiss followed by the brilliant LP Isn’t Anything. My Bloody Valentine were on an incredible roll that turned into an avalanche with 1990’s Glider EP & 1991’s Tremolo EP followed by Loveless!

Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation may have taken rock to its furthest reaches but Loveless took it beyond the universe and even into un-rock regions ie. ambient and ultra vague dance-rock. This was future rock’s cherry on top. We thought ongoing sonic exploration of rock was to continue but this was it. Loveless has now become an almost melancholy sonic document, like modernist Russian architecture that’s now in ruins, because it was never bettered. Don’t let that get you down though because this is a hell of a peak for rock’s innovation to go out on.

Here come the cliches. Loveless was hazy sweet languidity with a noisy and chaotic undercurrent played with frenzied yet laconic enthusiasm. Like the band’s name suggested a conundrum was at work here, where apathy and hysteria were used to describe the same song. Deliriously indolent, what about listless exhilaration? One tends to forget this record also fucking rocked as well as swimming in oceans of intoxicating euphoria, sometimes all at once. Oh yeah, Loveless is also pop music at its finest. Ecstatic aural pleasure at its Zenith.

*This review was written for the HC website in maybe 2014(?)

WHEN YOU SLEEP

Words are very unnecessary...      

...but...

When You Sleep is blistering noise pop of the most excessively exuberant kind so astonishing its wooziness will leave you woozy.

TOUCHED

Someone once commented 'Why didn't they do a whole side of the sort of stuff like Touched and the in between track hazy ambient gear?'  That would have been cool.

ONLY SHALLOW

Best opening tune to an LP ever?

 

i ONLY SAID

HOLY SHIT! This still sound incredible in 2025. Still drowning in pools of euphoria and disorientating elastic psychedelia. 

COME IN ALONE

And you go here's another one just like the other one... it's ok... then hang on a fucking minute this might be the greatest My Bloody Valentine tune of all. Waves and waves of guitar elation with a gloriously disconcerting undertow. Mind melting. 

SOMETIMES

Then you go oh fuck I forgot about the unplugged lo-fi anthem Sometimes! How good is this. Can it get any more cozy than this deceptively low key jam as it infinitely progresses getting higher and higher and more and more hypnotic as it expands heavenwards. 

WHAT YOU WANT

Hang on, hang on I forgot about What You Want... now surely this is the best tune here. There's something melancholy about this one like you're having one last romantic liaison as your summer affair draws to a close. Breathtakingly dizzy like falling in a dream, so bittersweet and aberrant. 

Yes people forget, as the popularity of Loveless has somewhat unexpectedly soared over the last 34 years, that this is pretty fucking weird music. Often off colour and bizarre yet always retaining a potent effervescence if a bit claustrophobic. 

Crescent - Lost

[1993]

Highly unusual, seemingly ramshackle but perhaps highly designed and tightly controlled wah-wah damaged tranced out space rock of the highest order. It's pretty fucking electrifying! This was the most raw and garage-y thing to be included under the banner of UK post-rock. 

For underground noisey rock 7" singles from the 90s it doesn't get any better.

Sandro Brugnolini - Megattera

[1970]

Pretty cool.

A hypnotic funky psych-groove jam with some neat twangy surf guitars, lead guitar lines put through a wah wah for added trippy effect while a space age synth adds further out there flavour.

*This goes right back to the dawn of the CardrossManiac2 blog. This great tune Megattera was included on the fabulous all killer no filler compilation Flipper Psychout: Original Italian Library Music From The Vault Of Flipper which was in the top 5 best archival compilations of 2011 list. 

Alessandro Alessandroni - White Sands

[1971]

Doesn't get any better than this. Like an idyllic postcard in sound with a Mediterranean sea breeze as the sun glistens on the water.  

Franco Bonfanti & Giancarlo Barigozzi - Vele Sul Mare

I think this is my favourite album cover ever. I like boats and boat art. Paintings should only be of boats. It's the only worthy art. 

I know I have an mp3 of this somewhere or maybe it's long gone with my computer from 2010. I do recall this being one of the best library records I encoutered back in 2007-2012, the heyday of the file sharing blog era... whenever it was when they invented mediafire. The idyllic seaside cover is a bit misleading as only a couple of tracks have a charming scenic beauty, mostly the coastal tranquility sours and a bustling nervous energy darkens the tone as it all turns a bit ominous. Obviously the music would have been perfectly suited to a documentary featuring creatures living under the sea whose doom is always looming. 

Porto Di Lavagna [1977]

Mostly blissful serenity with interludes of foreboding clouds.

Catamarano Baloo [1977]

Sea breezy cheese. Copacetic pleasantness with occasional swells into elated zones. A cinemascope soundscape worthy of a post-coital scene in a 70s Italian blue movie. 

Nice.

Vela 6 [1977]

I honestly can't think of another piece of music like this. An impeccable sound design of layered synths and assorted keyboards. Those thickly textured serene synths combined with with those uneasy fidgety organ runs, thin melodic keyboard lines, fluttery pianos and the swirling dark aquatic synthetic bass tones bubbling away create a strange world of sound. 

Circolo Vizioso [1977]

More of a suspenseful horror synth soundtrack vibe from the get go. Hypnotic and haunted.

Soling SOS [1977]

Cataclysmic thick synthetic textures and sporadic sinister percussion. Echoing keyboards of gloom and a triangle of impending doom.

[1907]

Speaking of boat art here's a great boat painting: The most perfect painting of a boat. Thanks Odilon Redon.

Pell Mell - Nothing Lies Still Long

Pell Mell - American Eagle [1991]

Well I always think Yawning Man are like the best SST band never to record an album for SST. That's mainly because on their debut album, Rock Formations (2005), they are musically like a cross between Meat Puppets and this group the underrated Pell Mell.

American Eagle opens Flow their second LP for SST. For an instrumental it is incredibly catchy and that sums up the beauty of Pell Mell, despite lacking a vocalist their tunes are incredibly lyrical with hooks galore and a thick atmosphere...

This one's pretty fuckin funky and upbeat with occasional sequences of dark twangy jangles that threaten to engulf the tune but the almost unhinged exuberance cannot be stopped as it destroys everything in its path. This goes off like a frog in a sock and gets to highly ecstatic levels, achieving similar results to that of a top rave tune.

Pell Mell - Nothing Lies Still Long [1995]

It was crazy times and a few years later they were releasing cds on Geffen. Get this straight, a quirky instrumental group that came out of the early 80s post-punk underground were now label mates with Counting Crows, Beck and Nirvana.

Make no mistake, despite the fact that I got this cd for $4 new not long after it was released, Interstate is a lost 90s classic. Its got all the driving psych instrumentals and mysterious atmospheric rock that was adjacent to happening genres of the time like slowcore, American post-rock, indie, math rock and the renewed interest in 70s Krautrock. 

This still sounds remarkably fresh today with its exquisite expansive production. Nothing Lies Still Long is a driving twangy instrumental rock jam that gets pretty mesmerising with its wide vistas, compulsive rhythms and dark dreamy atmosphere. 

Yawning Man - Rock Formations

Yawning Man - Rock Formations [2005]

Speaking of Yawning Man here's a coupla tunes from 20 years ago, yes 20 bloody years... 

This one's a pretty cool tripped out surf rock track. A bit of an eerie psychedelic summer atmosphere perfect for driving down the ocean highway, then through the secluded dessert to your secret destination. Mysterious.

Is it just me or are there are moments during this tune when it sounds like The Shadows covering Boards Of Canada? That's pretty strange when you think about it...

Yawning Man - Buffalo Chips [2005]

They up the ante on Buffalo Chips for some totally rockin' psych-surf action. This dessert dwelling trio cook up an absolute storm here. All three are on fire creating one hell of a smokin' unit. Definitely music for getting in your car at midnight and seeing where the tropical hotdog night takes you.

Crank this sucker up to eleven bitches!

Christof Waltz · GOBLYNS

[2025]

New music alert! For the second time in 2025 I'm bringing you music from the current year. I mean this tune coulda been made in the 80s, maybe even the 70s...  

A pretty cool trippy surf rock jam. Puts me in mind of Pell Mell or maybe Yawning Man. 

Wipers - Different Ways

[1986]

Just so cool.

An outsiders downbeat vision. A really original lo-fi abstract echoing trip out that gets into a haunting yet breezy groove. An uncommon mysterious tone becoming sublime. 

All around a parade of clowns

*The rock-crit consensus goes that this is from the Wipers demise era. We're supposed to believe Wipers started out with three top records then the rest were crap. Only problem is Land Of The Lost (1986), Follow Blind (1987) and Silver Sail (1993) are sterling LPs.

Honor Role - The Pretty Song LP

Honor Role - The Pretty Song LP [1986]

A fairly unknown post-punk group from Richmond Virginia who are a forgotten or perhaps a never even known influence on post-hardcore, indie math rock etc. The likes of Drive Like Jehu, Rocket From The Crypt, Fugazi and Superchunk acknowledge their influence and you gotta think Slint, Don Cabellero, Disco Inferno, Polvo, Unwound maybe even Eddy Current Suppression Ring along with many others benefitted artistically by listening to Honor Role. 

Here's a few tunes from their 1986 LP on Eskimo/No Core Records where guitarist Penn Rollings was beginning his purple patch of progression on the six strings. The Pretty Song is more classic shadowy post-punk merging into lo-fi slacker rock as opposed to Honor Role's 1989 follow up Rictus on Homestead Records which was more on the experimental noisey math-rock tip.

*I get there's some lazy, atemporal and reading history backwards zoomer-like retardedness going on in the snippet reviews below but for just one day only I don't care.

 

Throwing Rocks [1986]

Bringing you all the 90s slacker talk-singing and lo-fi in 1986. 

My Place (1986)

That lost bewildered sound filled with regret and defiance, wait for exciting classic guitar bit at 1:37.

. 

Six [1986]

Layers of gloom like if Rowland S Howard collaborated with Slint.

. 

Present Conditions [1986]

Downbeat 80s eeriness with Galaxie 500 (who didn't even exist yet) levels of reverbed guitar for maximum blissful day-dreaminess. Hard not to think this is a lost classic.

Care Taker [1986]

Desolate 80s. Dilapidated visions. Cold war fear. Enveloping ominousness. Tenebrous tones sonically somewhere between Gordons, Tactics and Wire circa 154.