My Bloody Valentine: MBV

MY BLOODY VALENTINE: M B V (2013)

1) She Found Now; 2) Only Tomorrow; 3) Who Sees You; 4) Is This And Yes; 5) If I Am; 6) New You; 7) In Another Way; 8) Nothing Is; 9) Wonder 2.

General verdict: A respectable and enjoyable attempt to reproduce and refresh the old formula, but comes nowhere near the magic charm of its predecessor.

Had My Bloody Valentineʼs third album been released hot on the heels of Loveless, it might have gone down in history as a solid follow-up, not breaking any particularly new ground but further consolidating and developing the bandʼs vision — a Magical Mystery Tour on the heels of their Sgt. Pepper, or a Day At The Races to match their Night At The Opera. Instead, Kevin Shields accidentally happened to drop through a wormhole, and emerged exactly twenty-two years later: an enigmatic disappearance that fascinated the critics for a brief while, but ultimately condemned the record to the status of a historical curio.

In between Loveless and MBV, the band had had ample time to tour, chill out, procrastinate, stall, stagnate, break up, reunite, tour some more, chill out some more, and find ways to cope with the mental problems of its leader — but almost none of that seems to rub off on the final product. In fact, I am not exactly sure if there is anything that rubs off on the final product. It clearly benefits from the advantages of 21st century production, but apart from that, it does not seem to owe any debts (at least, not major debts) to any of the contemporary musical genres or scenes. It just feels like a very natural, subtle evolution of MBVʼs sound that picks up exactly where Loveless left off and gently nudges the wheelbarrow just a tad further.

The tad in question is significant, though. On the whole, MBV is slightly less about hallucino­genic treatments of pop melody and more about the power of amplified, distorted drone. Cases where you get offered a sharply pronounced melodic riff, like ʽSoonʼ, are few, if any at all; in their place we usually witness violently strummed single chords, so that MBV ultimately is much closer to the ideal of «shoegazing» than its genre-transcending predecessor. This new — some might same lazier — approach, fortunately, does not apply to vocal melodies, most of which are still written in the finest traditions of melodic dream-pop and still faithfully feature Kevin on the outside and Bilinda on the inside, with the desired «androgynous» effect. Without the vocals, however, the music suffers: cue ʽNothing Isʼ, an odd instrumental that madly thrashes in place for three and a half minutes, like an enraged stallion galloping on the spot because the reins keep holding him back. For the first twenty seconds, it is cute; by the second minute, it has become annoying, by the third, unbearable. Perhaps they should have extended it by ten minutes, like ʽYou Made Me Realiseʼ — at least, that way it would be a statement and a psychological test. As it is, it is just three and a half minutes of wasted space.

What I do like about the record, though, is that it takes time to develop and gradually evolve. Loveless was essentially static: the formula was set in motion with the very first track and went on unhindered until the very end. MBV is less straightforward. The first couple of songs are very Loveless-like in style. ʽShe Found Nowʼ opens the album with expected layers of jangly and distorted guitars, smooth waves of feedback crackling atop your ceiling, and Kevinʼs vocals smoking out the window; ʽOnly Tomorrowʼ melds jangle and distortion in a single tone that goes along well with the accompanying romantic falsetto; ʽWho Sees Youʼ is like a hive of genetically engineered electric bees swarming around your head, with several additional hives gradually joining in at select intervals.

But none of these three songs are really on the same level with the best that Loveless had to offer; with all those guitars droning on rather than being dynamically melodic, you could suspect that this stuff might appeal to fans of stoner rock rather than people who, like myself, were won over by the ability of Loveless to combine overwhelming noise with lovely pop melody. And for me, therefore, MBV truly only begins to redeem itself by the time its fourth track comes along. ʽIs This And Yesʼ breaks with the formula by introducing keyboards into the mix — not modern-sounding keyboards by any means, but an old-fashioned organ sound filtered through some of Shieldsʼ filters, hypnotically wheezing through your ears on its own before it becomes completed with Bilindaʼs friendly ghost vocals. This is totally MBV in nature, but technically it is very different — one might even suggest a Beach House influence, except I am pretty sure that they would have been quite capable of coming up with this sound on their own.

From there on, subtle surprises come incessantly. ʽNew Youʼ is unexpectedly funky, bouncy, and sparsely arranged for MBV, except that whatever guitar and bass and vocal sounds there are, they still wobble and fluctuate like crazy — this is what Blondie may have sounded like if somebody came up with the idea of putting them on acid. ʽIn Another Wayʼ begins with a brief snippet of almost King Crimsonian guitar cacophony before settling into a much more familiar paradigm, yet even then the main melody is carried by an oddly bagpipe-like tone with strong Celtic over­tones (the band suddenly remembering their Irish roots?). And the closing ʽWonder 2ʼ takes a serious risk — it may be as close as they ever came to the edge of equating melody with total sonic chaos; although there is a definite rhythmic backbone and melodic structure, there is so much flanging and phasing that you may feel yourself being blown out of the little piggyʼs house by all the huffing and puffing. Not sure if I am a fan of that, but I appreciate the teasing.

That said, I will be cruel and state that MBV is not Loveless, because at times it tries too hard to be Loveless (and fails), and at other times it tries too hard not to be Loveless, and still fails. Some of these tracks are sonically very interesting, and some are quite lovely, but twenty years is a long time, and the magic cannot really be rekindled. There is a lot of atmosphere, for sure, but not nearly enough substance: I miss the strong melodic hooks that were such great fun to dig out from underneath the sonic rubble of Loveless — here, with cleaner production, the rubble is easier to remove, but the findings are comparatively disappointing. All of the stylistic experimentation and all the attempts to find new ways to apply the MBV formula are very welcome, yet I am afraid that lightning wonʼt really strike twice this time. 

My Bloody Valentine: EP's 1988-1991

MY BLOODY VALENTINE: EPʼs 1988-1991 (2012)

CD I: 1) You Made Me Realise; 2) Slow; 3) Thorn; 4) Cigarette In Your Bed; 5) Drive It All Over Me; 6) Feed Me With Your Kiss; 7) I Believe; 8) Emptiness Inside; 9) I Need No Trust; 10) Soon; 11) Glider; 12) Donʼt Ask Me Why; 13) Off Your Face.

CD II: 1) To Here Knows When; 2) Swallow; 3) Honey Power; 4) Moon Song; 5) Instrumental #2; 6) Instrumental #1; 7) Glider (full length); 8) Sugar; 9) Angel; 10) Good For You; 11) How Do You Do It.

General verdict: An essential collection for the bandʼs fans, an interesting educational piece for those casual admirers who wonder if there is any life beyond Loveless.

Since MBV only managed to put out two full length albums in their prime, it is reasonable to pay attention to their shorter products as well — in a way, one could argue that singles and EPs were a more natural, or, at least, a less painful, manner of expression for Kevin Shieldsʼ vision. Since allocating a single review to each EP would be a serious overkill (especially since the title songs off their EPs often made it onto LPs anyway), this particular compilation, released in 2012, comes very much in handy: it collects every EP that the band released from the year of Isnʼt Anything and right to the year of Loveless, plus a handful of rare and unreleased tracks to justify the presence of two CDs.

Other than one particular song (to which we will get a bit later), the discs offer little by way of revelation, but for those in sore need of an additional MBV fix this is all essential and auspicious listening. It could be said that the four EPs collected here represent two different and distinct epochs in the evolution of MBVʼs sound, with each pair further subdivided into two less different, but still subtly varying «sub-epochs»; and although I cannot call myself a true fan of the band in their pre-Loveless period, their gradual, natural, and inspiring evolution is fascinating to behold from its humble foundations right to the glorious peak.

On the first EP, You Made Me Realise, they are still very much a noise-rock indie band with lo-fi production values. The title track became famous in the underground world because of its «holocaust section» (the final distorted chord that would be put on forever loop and played as an incessant rumble for up to ten minutes), but the short studio version is just a fast-paced psycho-grunge rocker with psychedelic falsetto vocal harmonies — nothing particularly great, and nothing Sonic Youth could not have played in their sleep. The other four songs tend to be slower, with more pronounced acoustic guitar parts (ʽThornʼ) and soothing somno-folk female vocals (ʽCigarette In Your Bedʼ), but poor production values, unfortunately, bring down the melodic potential of even such prettily crafted tunes as ʽDrive It All Over Meʼ; at this point they are not yet anywhere near the level of Lovelessʼ sonic brilliancy, but neither are they capable of bringing out the full beauty of their guitars and vocals without the psychedelic effects.

Feed Me With Your Kiss, kicking off with the title track that would also make it onto Isnʼt Anything, is already a major improvement in terms of production, though not truly in terms of creativity. The brutal stabbing melody of ʽFeed Me With Your Kissʼ, come to think of it, is almost like a variation on ʽYou Made Me Realiseʼ (think an ʽAll Day And All Of The Nightʼ to a ʽYou Really Got Meʼ), but it sounds cleaner, with a much better drum sound, much thicker and weightier guitars, and a general impression that it might have been produced in a cavern rather than a toilet. That said, the other three songs are nothing to write home about: ʽI Need No Trustʼ, in particular, goes for a gently lulling effect with its blubberingly arpeggiated waltz tempo, but ends up sounding like something in between a completely stoned Syd Barrett and a completely spaced out Jeff Mangum, only messier and hissier than either of these gentlemen. I really do not think that My Bloody Valentine were cut out for this kind of «stoner folk».

Skip forward about a year and a half, though, and you get what is arguably the single most impor­tant moment in MBV history: the Soon EP, introducing the world to its first taste of the sound of Loveless. You already know everything there is to know about ʽSoonʼ, the song, but just as important and even more mind-blowing is ʽGliderʼ, a fully instrumental demonstration of Kevinʼs new guitar-playing technique — three minutes of what sounds like a herd of genetically modified elephants engaged in the wildest orgy on Earth. And if you think three minutes of this is way too much on the ears, how about ten minutes — on the full length version of the tune, appended as one of the bonus tracks on the second CD? In all honesty, I never listened to that one to the very end (fortunately, neither did any of the prisoners at Guantanamo, because CIA people can never really come up with anything more creative than good old black metal). But a couple minutes of that sound, perhaps the purest essence of the MBV sound ever distilled, is indispensable listening to anyone still not convinced that people in the Nineties could still make the kind of sonic innovations that could leave your jaw on the floor.

The best comes last: Tremolo, the last of the four EPʼs, was released with the band already in full Loveless mode. ʽTo Here Knows Whenʼ was the lead-in track, later to be included on Loveless itself; it is great, but almost just as great is ʽSwallowʼ, a «valentinization» of a sampled Turkish belly dancing track (Eastern psychedelia!). And ʽHoney Powerʼ and ʽMoon Songʼ are two other strong compositions of Loveless quality — the former now using that «elephant orgy» sound in support of a catchy and lovely vocal melody, and the latter returning us to the stoner-folk territory of ʽI Need No Trustʼ, but now with vastly improved production, as the steady, distorted waves of electric guitar conjure so much more majesty than three years before.

The bonus tracks are not ecstatic; but three previously unreleased songs are solid, if not particu­larly memorable, indie rock (I am not sure of the exact time of recording, but they clearly predate the Loveless era), and ʽInstrumental #2ʼ is a rare case of the band experimenting with minimalist drumʼnʼbass rhythms and echoey vocal overdubs, creating a bit of «ambient-dance» music; appa­rently, the trend did not catch on, but it is interesting to see them try out something that does not involve a shitload of acid guitar sound — just as it is, above and beyond everything else, interesting to witness the band evolve and reach their peak in slightly over an hourʼs time. All in all, the collection will hardly convert you if you are not already a fan, but if you are a fan, not owning it is like not owning the Beatlesʼ Past Masters.

My Bloody Valentine: Loveless

MY BLOODY VALENTINE: LOVELESS (1991)

1) Only Shallow; 2)  Loomer; 3) Touched; 4) To Here Knows When; 5) When You Sleep; 6) I Only Said; 7) Come In Alone; 8) Sometimes; 9) Blown A Wish; 10) What You Want; 11) Soon.

General verdict: "All you need is love" as seen from the perspective of Schrödinger's cat.

[This is a slightly expanded and modified version of a review previously written for the short-lived Great Albums series.]

From a certain point of view, the year 1991 should probably be counted as the true beginning of the «modern» era in popular music — in the most natural sense of the word: «one that is still going on as of the moment of this write-up» — and My Bloody Valentineʼs Loveless, along with Nirvanaʼs Nevermind (and despite being nowhere near as popular or commercially successful), is one of the few albums that really brought that era about. After all, the 1980s had been a weird, excessful decade whose main flaw may have been in that it took its outrageous discoveries far too seriously, and asserted its love for futuristic technology and outlandish fashions way too strongly for the average human being to adopt it once and for all without criticism. A touch of counterbalancing restraint, intelligence, and even healthy cynicism were in order; and in a way, what Nirvana and the grunge bands did for the basic rock scene (namely, planted its feet back on the ground), My Bloody Valentine did for the art-rock scene.

Loveless, the bandʼs one and only masterpiece, was made at a time when the quintessential atmospheric art-rock band was probably Cocteau Twins — a great act that was not, however, much of a proper «rock» band anyway, so the challenge was understandable: could a new rock album, made at the beginning of a new decade, genuinely rock out and colorfully blow your mind at the same time, like, you know, Hendrix could a couple decades ago? And could such an album combine its magical mystical sound with enough intelligence, so that the artists do not come across as a new reincarnation of Hawkwind, and drive away listeners who have become way too demanding to accept generic starry-eyed psychedelia?..

Notoriously, the album took almost three years to complete, and is said to have cost the bandʼs label, Creation, more than 200,000 pounds (precise sum remains uncofirmed, but pretty damn impressive for a label whose highest commercial client at the time were The Jesus And Mary Chain). This is an important point to consider, especially for those of us who tend to perceive the songs as too primitive, noisy, and sloppy; and it is also indirectly (or directly) responsible for the fact that the band found it impossible to record a follow-up — not only because of the resulting financial problems, but also due to Kevin Shieldsʼ Brian Wilson complex: as the poor guy felt obliged to follow the record up with something even more mind-blowing, he ended up almost blowing his own mind to smithereens instead.

Needless to say, the complicated nature of these sessions, and the bandʼs subsequent retreat into the shadows for more than twenty years has contributed a lot to the albumʼs now legendary status. Although Loveless only reached No. 24 on the UK charts upon release, and made very little impact on the American market, its critical reputation has only grown with time — primarily because it is such a tasty choice for all sorts of mythologising scenarios. The actual influence of Loveless on musicians world-wide, I think, has been more spiritual than substantial, because the sound of Loveless is almost impossible to copy and useless to imitate — but as far as ambitious and otherworldly guitar-based soundscapes are concerned at all, it seems clear that MBV are the ancestors of any other art-rock band with «modern» guitar sound, starting with Radiohead and ending with... well, with any art-rock band that still plays art-rock guitar today, as this seems to become a relative rarity. Naturally, this does not mean that they are exclusively entitled to that kind of praise; yet I can think of no post-1991 album that would redefine, far from the first but quite likely for the last time, the whole sound of the electric guitar.

Whether you like it or not, Loveless sounds like nothing else ever produced in the music business: ever. I might go as far as to state that, in a world where the word «psychedelia» gets randomly applied to everything from The Monkees to Aphex Twin, it is Loveless that could be considered the quintessential psychedelic album of all time, despite being released more than twenty years after the decline of the original Golden Age of psychedelia. Why? Merely because I have a hard time remembering any other record which, when played loud enough in headphones, would drive me so much out of my mind — literally, not figuratively. Take my word for it: if you want to know what «dazed and confused» is without resorting to any of the health-damaging substances, Loveless will work like a charm. You may not end up falling in love with it, but if you do not feel it having a disorienting, disconcerting, chemical-level effect on you, you are probably not doing it right, or maybe you are not designed for music listening in the first place.

The basic technique behind this is simple — the glide guitar effect, already in use on Isnʼt Anything but perfected and amplified by Shields as he is now almost constantly abusing the tremolo bar while strumming the strings. Throw in the novel use of the sampler to multiply and procreate feedback; add MBVʼs now-standard approach to the vocals, delivered in gently lulling falsettos and then mixed deep below the rumbling surface — and what you get is a bunch of songs that are here, there, everywhere, and nowhere at the same time: rock musicʼs ideal answer to the quantum theory. At first, I found this frustrating. «Where are the songs? This is like gliding through melted sonic butter, over and over again!» Only after several listens, when I was all but ready to give up and dismiss the whole thing as an overrated piece of junk, did it dawn on me that I had adopted the wrong attitude. Instead of instinctively fighting these sonic waves, you need to learn to ride them — and once you master the technique, they will take you places where no other piece of music can. Most likely, these words do not do the album proper justice; in that case, just go and stare at the album cover, intensely, for about five minutes, because it is a perfect visual correspondence for the sonic textures of the music.

The actual songs are, indeed, not particularly complex or challenging as compositions — although it would be wrong to insist that they completely lack individual hooks. Something like the twirling, belly-dancing high-pitched guitar riff on ʻI Only Saidʼ, for instance, is quite clearly a hook, as is the similar, but somewhat more cheerfully optimistic lead melody of ʻWhen You Sleepʼ or the pulsating dance pattern of ʻSoonʼ. However, they rarely jump out at once, and even after they do, it is clearly not the specific note sequences on these songs that constitute their greatest achievements. Had the album been produced in a completely different matter, the catchiness of the guitar hooks and the beauty of the vocal modulations might have stood out more distinctly — but whether the record would have gained from this is questionable; more likely, it would have simply gone down in history as one more melodic indie-rock production, barely distinguishable from, say, fifty thousand interchangeable records from New Zealandʼs «kiwi-pop» acts of the time. As it is, I prefer to acknowledge Loveless as a single, barely divisible whole, where some parts occasionally rise above others only by a split inch.

Sometimes Shieldsʼ mono production verges on the edge of lo-fi, not because it is lo-fi, but because all the gliding and twirling and panning and phasing threatens to reduce music to a bunch of static; on ʻTo Here Knows Whenʼ, for instance, the band really goes over the top, even burying the drums so deep in the mix that the rhythmic dream-pop song becomes a distorted air siren every time you cease straining your ears to capture all of the instruments. The good news is that you do not need to do any straining — like I said, the secret is in learning to ride the wave, and forget all about the rhythm section, which just acts as a strong underwater current to keep you going and prevent you from going under.

At the same time, it is also important to remember that Loveless, despite its title, is actually directly the opposite — it is a record that is very much filled with love, a fact that you do not have to debate once you get to, say, ʻBlown A Wishʼ. Half a dozen listens to that song will reveal the warmth and beauty of the Beatlesque vocal melody, as soon as you learn to extract it from the eggshell of what sounds like a thousand resonating guitars (but is probably only just one or two). Pretty much all of the songs, no matter whether louder or softer, are really love ballads, even if sometimes this can only be decoded by means of scattered keywords and key phrases ("love", "smile", "soft as a pillow", etc.): this is probably the albumʼs most obvious connection to Cocteau Twins, but Shieldsʼ vibes are even more straightforward and less treacherous than those of the Twins (where you sometimes think you are listening to an Elfish lady ballad, but are in fact listening to a «song of the Siren»). Loveless is really all about being lovestruck — with emphasis on struck, as the entire point is on transmitting the confused and disbalanced emotional state of a person who has just lost complete control of the senses.

Even the final track, ʻSoonʼ, which moves faster and funkier than everything else, and could be seen as MBVʼs slightly belated answer to The Stone Roses, is still first and foremost a happy-trance-vibe psychedelic epic, and only secondarily a dance number (its distinctive character is also due to the fact that it was written and recorded earlier than everything else, having first appeared on the Glider EP in 1990). It is a monotonous, repetitive, but enthralling conclusion — interestingly, where most people would probably want to use something energetic like that to open the album, ʻSoonʼ acts as its closing number, sort of a bouncy reward for all those who «suffered» through the slower numbers. All the more reason to see the entire album as a cohesive psycho-reflection on the many facets of love, culminating in a psycho-tribal psycho-epic psycho-dance. "Wake up, don't fear, I want to love you". Who exactly ends up Loveless here?

If there is one general problem about the record, it is fairly common for all such «one-trick albums»: as admirably as it performs its schtick, the schtick may not deserve to last for forty-eight minutes. The problem is not that you have to wait for the songs to «click»: the problem is that, even after they have clicked, they all employ more or less the same approach to sound-making and they all share the same vibe and set the same mood. The melodies of the songs are either not too great, or their greatness is completely eclipsed by the atmospheric production, with a classic paradox — the album needs to be vague, murky, and disorienting to achieve greatness, yet all these qualities also hinder us from seeing the virtues of the individual tunes. At first, only ʻSoonʼ sounds any different from the rest, due to its ferocious «post-Madchester» rhythmic thud. Then you begin, slowly, slowly, to uncover the individual hooks — but even today, I have a hard time bringing up the chords of something like ʻLoomerʼ in my memory, for instance, or about a third of the other songs.

Clearly, this also raises the question of whether the album deserves the scope of its reputation (such as featuring in the current «top 10 albums of all time» rating on RateYourMusic). Kevin Shields is obviously a guy with a vision, but, like most indie kids of his or any other era, not a particularly great musician or note-weaver, for which lack of talent he found quite an awesome way to compensate. However, for honestyʼs sake, the same accusation could be flung at 99% of people working in «shoegaze», «post-rock», «drone-core», whatever, idioms — some people are good at writing great melodies, and some people are good at writing average melodies and then making them sound great with fabulous production skills. You could say that Loveless is so much more about the sauce than it is about the meat... but then, you could probably say the same about not a few gourmet French restaurants, couldnʼt you?

As far as general popularity is concerned, Loveless has always been, and will always remain, an acquired taste. There is no immediate appeal to its songs like there was to Nirvanaʼs tormented youth laments back in 1991, and the impressive walls of sound that the band constructed for these tunes will forever keep away more people than they will contain within. Critics and musicians will always find more to cherish here than the average music lover, too lazy to scoop the sunny beauty of the songs out of the wobbly, disconcerting production — and, honestly, once you have scooped that out, you will probably want to immediately put it back in, because Loveless Naked might end up sentimentally embarrassing. But even if you unclothe it and embarrass it and dissect it and dismiss it, it is hard not to admire the sheer artistic arrogance that went into the making of this record. Every day we get to hear albums where people fruitlessly attempt to mask their lack of songwriting talent by loudness, pathos, distortion, and clichéd «epic» chord sequences — somehow, though, I have yet to hear an album where lack of songwriting talent would be masked by making a guitar sound like the collective movement of a well-organized pixie squad in the night. With a musical fantasy like that, could not even the simplest written song eventually end up sounding like a work of absolute genius? Whatever. The best news is, I have listened to Loveless more than twenty times in my life, and I still end up confused — by it, about it, and in spite of it.

My Bloody Valentine: Isn't Anything

MY BLOODY VALENTINE: ISNʼT ANYTHING (1988)

1) Soft As Snow; 2) Lose My Breath; 3) Cupid Come; 4) (When You Wake) Youʼre Still In A Dream; 5) No More Sorry; 6) All I Need; 7) Feed Me With Your Kiss; 8) Sueisfine; 9) Several Girls Galore; 10) You Never Should; 11) Nothing Much To Lose; 12) I Can See It (But I Canʼt Feel It).

General verdict: The band has finally found its fabulous signature sound, but still seems a bit unsure whether to fully rely on it; too many vestiges of generic indie rock left on the tracks.

Although My Bloody Valentineʼs proper debut LP is frequently described as a pioneering effort in the history of «shoegazing», I would say that any such description would be selling Isnʼt Anything way too short. Technically, of course, Shields and Co. were shoegazers, what with the heavy use of guitar pedals to weave their mesmerizing atmosphere. But their own roots lay at least partially in avantgarde noisemaking, and by linking those to elements of sonic psychedelia and pop songwriting, by the end of 1988 they had worked out a kind of sound that was all their own and nobody elseʼs — partly because nobody else could exactly work out what the hell Shields was doing, and partly because it would take pretty big balls to create this kind of sound even if you knew how to do it properly.

The biggest flaw of Isnʼt Anything is that it isnʼt Loveless. In a couple more years, the band would whittle that formula down to absolute perfection and push it as far as it could go without producing completely unlistenable results. Isnʼt Anything, in comparison, still sounds like a transitional album — a compromise between relentless experimentation and more traditional indie folk-rock. One neednʼt go further than compare the beginnings of each record: a very similar powerful drum beat opens both ʽSoft As Snowʼ and ʽOnly Shallowʼ, but where the latter explodes almost immediately in a wall-of-sound onslaught where all the instruments and vocals diffuse into one another, ʽSoft As Snowʼ employs a far subtler and sparser approach — first you get a sneaky funky bassline, then the guitar arrives in brief outbursts of fluttering, ghost­wailing chords, and the sonic space is sufficiently quiet and silent to actually make out the words that Kevin is singing. And he is actually singing a fairly simple folk-pop melody, not unlike the kind you could easily encounter on a Bob Dylan or even a James Taylor record — it is just that the guitar behind it is so freaky and ghostly that you will probably not be able concentrate on the sources of that vocal part anyway.

Since the lyrics are more clearly audible throughout the album than they would be on Loveless, it becomes clear pretty soon that Isnʼt Anything is really just a collection of love songs — with the added benefit of a radically new way to present the same age-old emotions. And in Bilinda Butcher, Shields has found here the perfect partner: with her vocals now being an essential part of the bandʼs sound, Kevin and Bilinda now play the parts of star-crossʼd lovers, acting out very Romeo-and-Juliettan fantasies of union, separation, longing, yearning, bliss, and despair. The old goth elements can still be seen in tracks that focus more closely on the elements of separations and farewells, but Isnʼt Anything transcends and merges the borders of happy optimism and tragic pessimism — sometimes within the confines of the same track. This all might seem quite trivial when I mention it, but it is important to mention that Isnʼt Anything makes perfect sense, that it is not just an album where some pretentious indie guy decided to torture our ears with thirty minutes of guitar pedals.

Given that all great pop music goes back to The Beatles one way or another (well, thatʼs life, I canʼt really do anything about it), it would make sense to note a very specific connection on one of the albumʼs key tracks, ʽNo More Sorryʼ — the only song here that does not have a steady rhythm track, but instead plays out as a sort of grand resolution to some major theme, stuck in an endless loop of tremolos and crescendos, over which Bilinda half-whispers, half-prays to her other who "loved me black and blue", a line after which I always want to hear "Iʼd love to turn you on", but get "no more sorry" instead. Indeed, here and elsewhere My Bloody Valentine go for the same cosmic combination of love, beauty, and tragedy that was so perfectly captured on ʽA Day In The Lifeʼ — and, in a way, those MBV records were the Sgt. Pepper-level equivalents of late Eightiesʼ / early Ninetiesʼ psychedelia, even with the music on the «indie level» of recording and production (it is interesting to speculate whether the results may have been more or less impressive with a seasoned producer like George Martin, but certainly they would have taken away from the lo-fi rawness that set the record so far apart from the mainstream).

That said, quite a few songs on Isnʼt Anything still sound a bit too close to generic indie-rock. Something like ʽYou Never Shouldʼ, for instance, would have been completely out of place on Loveless: too fast, too much ordinary guitar distortion, too much emphasis on the weakness of Kevinʼs voice when he draws out those vowels, and not enough production wizardry to redeem all these defects. And this is a song that shares the same disc space with ʽAll I Needʼ, a barrage of heavenly noise where it takes several listens to begin to discern the melody and a few more to realize that this is almost Brian Wilson-level shit, only covered in so many layers of distortion, flanging, pedaling, whatever, that you might have to be lying in a coma in order to perceive it the way it was probably intended to be perceived.

It is this uneven nature of the songs and the production that ultimately mars the general effect. At their best, My Bloody Valentine should really be taken wholesome, without bothering too much about appreciating the individual melodies — this is the way Loveless works — but there are too many jarring transitions from stuck-in-the-past to the-future-is-now on this record to make it flow as smoothly as the bandʼs masterpiece. While I still enjoy most of the albumʼs short duration, I do not truly have much use for it — although I do think that ʽNo More Sorryʼ, if taken out of this context and thrown on as a bonus track at the end of Loveless, would have added the perfect finishing touch to that record. 

My Bloody Valentine: Ecstasy And Wine

MY BLOODY VALENTINE: ECSTASY AND WINE (1987; 1989)

1) Strawberry Wine; 2) Never Say Goodbye; 3) Can I Touch You; 4) She Loves You No Less; 5) The Things I Miss; 6) I Donʼt Need You; 7) (Youʼre) Safe In Your Sleep; 8) Clair; 9) You Got Nothing; 10) (Please) Lose Yourself In Me.

General verdict: A pretty brand of psycho-folk, but still with only indirect signs of the greatness to come.

This sounds much more like it. With Conway out of the band, replaced by amateur vocalist Bilinda Butcher (who was also made to play second guitar, despite having almost no prior experience with the instrument), the classic lineup of My Bloody Valentine is now in place; and by early 1987, Shields, who had emerged as the bandʼs primary songwriter and artistic leader, decided that, instead of bashing their luck against the dark rocks of «goth» and «post-punk», the band should focus on its natural strengths and go in a more psychedelic pop direction. The shift of direction was so abrupt and thorough that they even contemplated changing the bandʼs name (seing as how there was hardly anything «bloody» about this new music), but ultimately stayed true to the old moniker because (a) they were unable to come up with anything better and (b) they probably secretly enjoyed the dissonance between the terrifying self-appellation and the soothing musical content behind it.

The album under review was actually issued a couple of years after the release of the original material: it puts together their early three-song single ʽStrawberry Wineʼ, where the new sound fully coalesced for the first time, and the following seven-song mini-album Ecstasy, both of them released on the Lazy Records label. Together, this makes for about half an hour of continuous play — and, although the sound is consistently pleasant, thirty minutes is actually still much too long for this kind of stuff.

Much of what would later make Loveless so great is already here — the lulling dream-pop guitar rhythms, the vocal harmonization between Kevin and Bilinda where the latter plays a romantic dream echo for the former, and, most importantly, the ghostly production where the guitars and vocals seem to diffuse into each other, creating a dirty-ish, lo-fi-ish psychedelic effect that can be visualised as «making your way through the deadwood of a magic forest late at night». What is still missing, however, is the ability to create strong instrumental hooks and monumental walls of acoustic and electric sound to go along with them. (Interestingly, the majority of the songs depend on acoustic jangle rather than electric distortion — at this point, the band has rejected heaviness so completely that they would have to catch up on it later on).

If you have heard ʽStrawberry Wineʼ, you probably already have a very good idea of how the rest of the record is going to sound: fast, energetic, lo-fi, and — if you can make out any of the lyrics, which you are not really expected to — surprisingly influenced by the old folk scene when it comes to verbalizing some of the emotions, though, truth be told, the text of ʽStrawberry Wineʼ is largely just a collection of old-timey lyrical clichés that could quite easily be produced by one of those modern songwriting bots ("misty morning in the springtime... on the darkside let the light shine... these lips will find strawberry wine..." etc. etc.). Melody-wise, they are influenced by both Cocteau Twins and The Smiths, but ʽStrawberry Wineʼ and its ilk have the complexities and intricacies of neither — the band membersʼ instrumental skills are amateurish, and the voices of Kevin and Bilinda, though very pleasant and soothing, have no special coloring to them. On the other hand, these circumstances also make the material easily accessible: artsy and psychedelic, sure, but burdened with none of the weirdness that can put an inexperienced listener off Liz Fraser or Morrissey.

Some of the songs go even deeper in time in regard to their influences: slow ballads such as ʽCan I Touch Youʼ are really just your good old-fashioned Sonny & Cher-style folk-pop given a modern lo-fi sonic coating, while ʽClairʼ sounds like a long-lost Byrds outtake from circa the 5th Dimension period. And in those rare instances where they decide to throw in some electric distortion and fuzz, after all, the result is an equally old-school garage rock sound (sentimental on ʽThe Things I Missʼ, more hard-rocking on ʽLose Yourself In Meʼ). This is not particularly important for this early try at artistic relevance, but it does help to understand where My Bloody Valentine were really coming from and what actually made them so different from the majority of «shoegazers» — they really had a fairly conservative attitude when it came to songwriting, and it is mainly their manipulations with soundwaves that made all the difference.

In any case, unless you are a major fan of guitar jangle that can, for instance, differentiate between each and every album (or song!) released by The Bats, Ecstasy And Wine, like This Is My Bloody Valentine, will largely be interesting for historical reasons — though, unlike its predecessor, it can actually be enjoyed through and through without involuntary reactions of the «oh, what a pitiful attempt to sound like so-and-so» variety. Also, it is one of the best places to go if you want to hear what Kevinʼs and Bilindaʼs voices really sound like, or even to discern some of the English syllables that they are enunciating — not that the latter matters much, since the lyrics arenʼt anything to write home about, either. 

My Bloody Valentine: This Is Your Bloody Valentine

MY BLOODY VALENTINE: THIS IS YOUR BLOODY VALENTINE (1985)

1) Forever And Again; 2) Homelovinʼ Guy; 3) Donʼt Cramp My Style; 4) Tiger In My Tank; 5) The Love Gang; 6) Inferno; 7) The Last Supper.

General verdict: Not so much humble as slavish beginnings; a historical curio that is as astonishingly disconnected from the bandʼs major legacy as your baby teeth are from your grave.

Okay, I honestly wish I didnʼt have to do this, but since I do run a small collection of «hopelessly hopeless beginnings by future great artists» down in my imaginary basement, This Is Your Bloody Valentine still requires a quick check-in. Recorded somewhere in West Berlin sometime in late 1984, this seven-song mini-album fulfills the important mission of letting you, the listener, understand why the band that made Loveless happened to be called My Bloody Valentine in the first place. Featuring seven songs, with all credits shared equally by guitar / bass player Kevin Shields, drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig, and vocalist David Conway, this mini-album is a collection of just about every cliché that these guys could appropriate from the post-punk, goth-rock, and noise-rock underground of the late 1970s / early 1980s — and nothing else.

It is not unlistenable: the West Berlin production is passable, the playing is decent enough, and Conway had some vocal talent to burn. And, at least in theory, there is nothing inherently wrong in having your first album sound way too close to its influences. Problems begin when you under­stand that there is nothing here, nothing at all, except for unsatisfactory results of the process of searching for oneʼs own identity. On one song, this results in them sounding exactly like Bauhaus; on another, they end up sounding exactly like The Birthday Party; a third one, and you get Joy Division; fourth, you get Echo And The Bunnymen; fifth, you get The Smiths. The only thing you do not get at all is even a single sign that this band is going anywhere special. Or just any­where, period. This is as generically imitative as it gets.

I suppose we could congratulate them on some impressive imitation talents — Conway pulls off quite a convincing Morrissey on ʽThe Last Supperʼ (even though Tina Durkinʼs keyboard solo is more close to ʽLight My Fireʼ era Ray Manzarek), and his Peter Murphy on ʽForever And Againʼ ainʼt half-bad either. On the other hand, his Nick Cave on ʽDonʼt Cramp My Styleʼ could use a lot more roar and gargle — clearly, Conway never possessed the required madman essence. As for Shields, I suppose that some of the guitar and bass melodies here could serve as indications of the talents-to-come, but the manʼs major contribution to mankind would be in the form of sonic textures rather than chord sequences, and since there are no original sonic textures here to speak of, all we can do is pretend to enjoy the deeply derivative feedback crunches or, occasionally, the even more deeply derivative fuzzy garage riffs that hearken all the way back to the Nuggets era (ʽTiger In My Tankʼ could just as well be written by The Chocolate Watchband).

From this point of view, I suppose that really huge fans of the entire early 1980s post-punk scene, the ones who just keep on wanting more and more of the same, could allocate enough time and goodwill to enjoy this stuff. Those who love their MBV for the stuff that made them MBV and not second-rate imitators, though, will simply accept this as a brief lesson on the bandʼs history.