Loveless - My Bloody Valentine

Tim's Ultra Rough Guide To Rock - Part VI

After my previous post on Debbie Googe I thought I'd put up this old bit I wrote on on Loveless.

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 (er..thanks Mr Reynolds). 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 and 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. Did I say deliriously indolent? No? Well I have now. 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.

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 great wouldn't it?

Best opening tune to an LP ever?

That's a good game: Best opening songs to albums. Simon should rally everyone for that can of worms.

* My original review taken from the HC Website. 

m b v - My Bloody Valentine

It just came out of the blue. If you can call waiting for 22 years for a follow up to one of the all time great albums out of the blue. What I mean is it was put out with little fanfare. Kevin Shields said the other day it might be coming out soon and then bang there it was on their website. Some people were paying attention though as the website crashed due to immense traffic. I heard one track on youtube Wonder 2 and got a little excited. The next day I'd bought the LP, cd and download for more than 40 dollars. So a nostalgic vibe took over. What was I really expecting though? Surely I wasn't expecting them to blow my mind at this late stage was I? Can they still make dizzy music to disconcert?

In 1996 I was still hopeful about the follow up to Loveless. There were reports of the tracks being jungle and metal influenced. This kept me interested for a few years. Eventually though I came to the realisation that it was never going to come out. Then I was of the opinion that perhaps this was a good thing. Retire at your peak. Nice. Have years of meltdowns, budget blowouts and scrapped half finished albums. This will all add to the mystique and they will become legendary well, more legendary.

22 years on from Loveless and the innovations have become common place. The radical normalised. 22 years of artists pillaging this treasure chest have almost(?) made My Bloody Valentine redundant. So what could MBV have to offer us now? When Loveless came out there were even a few people who said "Is that it?' The shoegaze brigade (Slowdive, Curve, Lush, Pale Saints, Boo Radleys et al.) had already started using and abusing MBV's legacy which perhaps made Loveless less startling than it should have been. Then groups like Seefeel, Flying Saucer Attack, Third Eye Foundation etc. expanded upon MBV's frontiers and perhaps took their blueprint to several logical conclusions. MBV kept being a name checked influence throughout the 90, 00s and 10s. I personally have failed to keep up with the new shoegazers. The last things I heard were from 10 years ago when Pluramon and M83 began exhibiting a heavy MBV influence. The lineage continues to this day apparently with Deerhunter and the like carrying the torch.

The (non) marketing of m b v caught me a little off guard and I was swept up in nostalgic momentum. Wonder 2 is probably the best track on the LP, well at the moment it's only actually an mp3. The first half of m b v has the hazy sweet languidity part of the Loveless equation but lacks the other half ie. the noisy and chaotic undercurrent. These two yin and yang elements are what make My Bloody Valentine  so great. So it's nice but feels half finished. Where are the manic pop thrills?

Then along comes track six New You. I don't really know what to make of this track at all. It just feels wrong. Is this where I say nadir? Is it some kind of attempt at a MOR crossover? It just comes across like a bad Phoenix outtake. Next is In Another Way and thank god! It's a fucking MBV classic with all the elements that we know and love, but is it too little too late? Track 8 Nothing Is sounds like an attempt at a Meat Puppets instrumental?? Finally it's wonder 2. The album starts to really hit its stride with this dose of swirling and shape shifting psychedelia. Then the album's done. It's finished and you're left feeling a little bewildered.

m b v sounds like it could have come out in 1993 as a kind of follow up/companion piece to Loveless. What happened to the metal? Where's the jungle? Those recordings seem to have been scrapped and Kevin, Belinda, Colm and Debbie have gone for a Ramones/ACDC move ie. If it ain't broke don't fix it. They've settled on their bag of tricks and they've decided to sail in conservative waters.  Was there nowhere else to go? Did others get there first? Was there too much second guessing? Were the scrapped recordings shite? How did that winning streak from the You Made Me Realise EP to Loveless come to such a bizarre end? Are these the questions that have plagued Kevin Shields' mind for the last 22 years?

ATP

So i got a text today saying you gotta go to the Melbourne ATP, MBV and Einsturzende Neubauten are gonna be there. First thought was I saw both of these groups over 20 years ago when they were in their prime. EN being probably the best thing I've ever seen. It was at the Old Greek Theatre in Richmond Melbourne. The place felt like it was gonna fall apart. I remember seeing some of the lights falling from the ceiling, not being able to breathe due to fog of hardcore Camel/Marlboro smokers, two chicks having sex in the toilet, hardly being able to walk due to empty beer cans piling up to my shins, blood in my eardrums and then there was the music. Which was the most astonishing thing I'd ever seen/heard. It was so physical, intense, noisy (in a controlled manner), loud, mental, expressive and sexy. That was unforgettable. It wasn't rock. It was totally rock'n'roll though.

I saw MBV twice at The Prince Of Wales, St Kilda on the Loveless tour. It's all a bit of a blur really. First show not so good and the other one was tops. I recall having Belinda's set list from one of the shows on my wall for a couple of years. Should I have kept that?

Anyway I guess what I'm getting at it is, it would be like seein The Stones in the 70's compared to like the Stones in the late 90s. Do I want that mind image? I don't know what else is on ie. there could be a bunch of modern stuff that I like like Gary War, Human Teenager, Rangers, Future, ekoplekz, Sun Araw or whoever on the bill but it was the heritage/vintage acts that were pitched toward me as ticketbait. This also happened several weeks ago when I was told Shellac and Moore/Ranaldo (of Sonic Youth) are playing at the Melbourne Festival soon. I saw Shellac around the time of their first LP.  After Sonic Youth's Don't Look Back Daydream Nation show I thought that's the ultimate in this kind of thing, probably need to pull back a bit from the nostalgia now. Actually it was in an ad in a British magazine I had a little chuckle. I thought that Thurston Moore had gone a little too far by touring one of his 90s solo records Don't Look Back Stylee. Psychic Hearts is an ok record but were there people dreaming of that gig for years, say like I was for a Pixies  (they never toured Australia in their original lifetime) or a Smiths reuion. I bet there are some great things on at the Melbourne Festival for all I know Gang Gang Dance are playing. Note to self see who's playing at these things. This whole Vintage/Nostalgia/Heritage Rock thing is startin to you know get a bit whiffy. As I said in my text though if they get Alan Vega & Martin Rev aka. Suicide out of the old peoples home I might come and see some Heritage Rock.