Artist: My Bloody Valentine
Label: Pickpocket Records
Release: 2013
Length: 46:32
Rating: 4.7/5
A lot of game-changing stuff has gone down on the alternative music scene in the last 22 years. Above all, it became the era when alternative rock really broke into the consciousness of the average listener. Nirvana did most of that heavy lifting, after the likes of R.E.M., The Cure and others had been grinding away at it for years. A whole pile of new genres has sprung up, from post-rock to blackgaze (a blend of shoegaze and black metal). An insane number of albums have come out that punch through the slowly dying music industry, which is buckling under the pressure of the capitalist market – from the Pumpkins’ Siamese Dreams through Radiohead’s OK Computer and Kid A to last year’s comebacks (pioneers in their fields) Soundgarden and Godspeed You! Black Emperor with King Animal and ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!. Radiohead, for instance, shook up the online music market with In Rainbows and its “pay what you want” option. There’s no shortage of landmark moments. But through all those years, one particular album was probably the most missed on this scene. Because in those good two decades, there was no third album from shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine, the band that in 1991 (more or less the watershed year for the alternative scene) put out the unforgettable Loveless, laid the foundations of shoegaze and gathered a proper cult around itself.
My Bloody Valentine did get back together a few years ago for a handful of exclusive shows, but nothing much came of it. That only happened last year, when Kevin Shields finally announced that the new MBV album would be out by the end of 2012. The band also announced a bunch of dates for this year (you can read the report from the London gig, which went down in January, HERE), saying they’d play the new record too, so the whole drooling crowd was convinced that this time Kevin Shields wasn’t kidding (he’d already announced the third album a few times, and those announcements go all the way back to 1996; the band also spent more than two years recording Loveless, since Shields wasn’t happy with any studio, and they went through dozens of them, which nearly bankrupted Creation Records). The band also put up a new website, which said only that it would open soon – with new content and a web shop. Shields also announced that the album would be available for free. So up to the end of 2012, that website must have taken a really nice number of refreshes. Shields must have had a good laugh watching the traffic on his site. Because on January 1st, a minute into the first hour of the new day, there was still no album. The part of the internet where the alt music scene hangs out went nuts anyway, with Shields getting strung up on gallows, burned at the stake, sent under the guillotine… but long story short – Shields didn’t drag the whole thing out for two more years after all, and was a lot more merciful to his fans. The album m b v, My Bloody Valentine’s third studio album, came out on February 2nd, 2013. But the moment the band refreshed the new site, where the new album was, it completely collapsed. The rush was so huge that the servers couldn’t handle that kind of traffic, which knocked out access to the album entirely for a few hours. So the fact is simple – the hype around this album was seriously massive.
The album itself, which contains nine brand-new tracks, kind of splits into three parts: the so-called Loveless 2 part, the Bilinda Butcher part and the final, modern My Bloody Valentine part. I got that sense of a split already on the first listen. The first three tracks – »she found tomorrow«, »only tomorrow and »who sees you« – definitely feel like they were pulled from the period when Loveless was made. It doesn’t feel like they were written now, but they follow a very similar formula to the tracks on Loveless. They’re maybe a bit less melodic, or have less of that »catchy« moment that so richly adorns the band’s second record. Still, the production is very different, maybe a bit more mature, and this is definitely where they part ways most from tracks like »Loomer«, »Sometimes« and »Soon«. The guitars aren’t as sharp, and the bass frequencies don’t go beyond the lower and upper levels of the noise. The fact that Kevin Shields changed his approach to production over these 22 years is also proven by the remasters of the first two albums – Shields released them last year.
The next trio of tracks is marked by Bilinda Butcher. They’re a kind of transitional phase between the band’s Loveless era and the new era. Bilinda’s vocals make them very reminiscent of the previous decade, but at the same time they’re arranged in a more experimental, more incoherent way, though in the manner Shields is exploring with these very different guitar approaches, with that floating distorted backdrop that Bilinda follows in a way, while on the other hand still trying to hold onto some kind of solo line. This trio – »is this and yes«, »if i am« and »new you« – is definitely a step away from the more melodic previous trio and from Loveless. It’s caught between past and present, between two sounds, between two relationships. And although that makes it feel incoherent, chronologically it kind of ties the first three tracks to the last three.
»In another way«, »nothing is« and wonder 2« are more or less what we’ve been waiting so long for. Something new, something fresh, something… transcending. Sure, it’s nice to listen to Loveless and its many copies, and when all’s said and done, there’d have been nothing wrong with a “Loveless 2” album either – plenty of people would have liked that much more than the actual new album, m b v. But these three tracks are exactly the proof of how daring Kevin Shields is in exploring sonic forms. Experimental helicopter sounds, effects that go beyond the tremolo arm, distortion and reverse reverb, Bilinda’s vocals stepping out of what she does best, out of a kind of comfort zone, and trying out more unconventional tones and singing styles. Kevin Shields still keeps at least a minimal pop-melodic note, but in really minimal amounts, maybe just enough that we can still link the new stuff to the old. Still, the trio, especially the last one, »wonder 2«, is drastically different from the preceding six tracks, and not just because there’s more experimentation, but because stylistically it marks a big step down a different sonic path. That’s really the smartest decision Kevin made – Loveless was perfection in that particular style, so he had to try something new.
The vocals, and with them the lyrics, are once again more or less heavily blurred throughout the album, as we’re of course used to from My Bloody Valentine; it’s hard to make out what Bilinda and Kevin are actually singing. One anecdote has it that Kevin Shields said he’d set up a website where he’d rate the attempts to figure out the lyrics of their songs, which turn up all over the internet (in very different forms). He’s stressed many times that the most common interpretations of the vocals aren’t even close to the real lyrics. That gives the band an extra air of mystery, which pushes the listener to play it again and again, and that in turn lets them discover the insanely huge number of patterns and layers in the band’s endlessly deep sonic backdrop.
It’s interesting that Kevin Shields sings on only two tracks, which is a real shame, since it was precisely the duo of those fantastic vocals, Bilinda’s and Shields’, that gave My Bloody Valentine their specific charm, which is maybe what’s missing on m b v. There’s none of that soft charm of two dreamy voices, female and male, which isn’t bad in itself, especially if Shields wanted to move away from exactly that, but it seems to me that this is what’s missed most on m b v, even more than more memorable, »catchy« melodies or greater coherence across the album. It’s also true that the relationship between Bilinda and Kevin isn’t what it used to be (and maybe never will be; they were a couple, after all), which could also explain the lack of shared parts.
M b v isn’t Loveless. And that’s exactly as it should be. Loveless was simply perfect, and perfection can’t be topped. So with m b v, Kevin Shields decided above all to make something different, not Loveless 2, which might have been the easiest route. Still, m b v remains everything that makes My Bloody Valentine great – perpetual progress, perpetual sonic exploration, perpetual indecision over whether to be a pop band or an experimental one, whether to win fans or drive them away. M b v is the logical next step for a band, though it won’t free them from the (perhaps eternal) glory of Loveless. Worth the wait or not, m b v is here.
Lineup
Kevin Shields – vocals, guitars, bass guitar
Bilinda Butcher – vocals, electric guitar
Colm Ó Cíosóig – drums
Deb Googe – bass guitar
Production
Kevin Shields
Tracklist
01 she found now
02 only tomorrow
03 who sees you
04 is this and yes
05 if i am
06 new you
07 in another way
08 nothing is
09 wonder 2
